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Friend, The Trump administration’s racist and inhumane immigration raids are tearing families apart, destroying communities, and have already directly contributed to at least one death this year.(1) The irreversible human toll of these attacks on immigrant communities is devastating, but so is the windfall for the private prison industry.(2) CoreCivic -- one of the largest private prison companies in the US, which operates four prisons in California that have been cited for numerous "serious failings" by California Attorney General Rob Bonta -- is benefitting from that windfall.(3,4) The private prison company contracted to run Trump’s illegally constructed “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida, which is meant to house as many as 5,000 undocumented people from all over the country in unsafe conditions.(5) CoreCivic contributed $500,000 and its CEO donated another $300,000 personally to Donald Trump.(6)
Indigenous organizers in Florida have raised the alarm around the flagrant violation of the tribal sovereignty of the Miccosukee and Seminole Nations who live on the land surrounding the facility.(7) Environmental activists are calling out the catastrophic ecological impacts of the facility and its construction.(8) And immigration advocates are highlighting the inhumane conditions of housing people in unsafe, unprotected tents in the Everglades.(9) Each of these violations should be enough to shut down the facility, but taken in total, it shows the clear disregard this administration has for indigenous land rights, environmental impacts, human life, and basic decency. The Florida facility is a blueprint for similar detention centers nationwide, including an ICE and CoreCivic plan to transform a closed state prison in California City into a center that many advocates are opposing.(10) However, we have seen public opinion shifting against immigration enforcement, which presents an opportunity for us to pressure Congress to launch an investigation. Thank you for being in the fight! –Irene, along with Annie, Angela, Isidra, Cecilia, Jen, and Lindsay (the Courage team)
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