INSTITUTE INDEX: Cashing in on child abuse at the border
Immigrant rights advocates held a march outside the Homestead Detention Center in Florida last month to call for the closure of that and other migrant child detention centers. (Photo by Rebecca Rice via the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee's Flickr account.)
Under federal law, maximum number of days children captured after crossing the border into the U.S. without authorization are allowed to be held by U.S. Customs and Border Protection before being transferred to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR): 3
Number of weeks some migrant children were held at a border station in Clint, Texas, where visiting lawyers found filthy and overcrowded conditions: 3
Date on which an asylum-seeking father and daughter from El Salvador, trapped in a holding camp in Mexico because of the Trump administration's "metering" policy of limiting the number of asylum claims it will process per day, drowned while crossing the Rio Grande: 6/23/2019
Number of migrant children who've died in U.S. custody so far this year: 6
Percent by which the number of children in ORR custody grew in the first two years of the Trump administration due to its aggressive and unprecedented family separation policy: 400
Month in which immigrant rights advocates won a major victory by shutting down the notorious Tornillo detention camp for children in the Texas desert: 1/2019
That same month, factor by which the Trump administration increased the number of children in custody at the ORR shelter in Homestead, Florida, which has been described by critics as a "prison camp": almost 2
Value of the tax break Comprehensive Health Services, the Florida company that co-manages the Homestead facility, got from the state in July 2017: $600,000
Five months before receiving the tax break, amount the company paid to settle a medical fraud claim brought by the U.S. Justice Department: $3.8 million
Value of the contract that Virginia-based defense contractor General Dynamics got to provide training and technical assistance at the Homestead facility: $1.6 million
Year in which the investment firm D.C. Capital Partners purchased Comprehensive Health Services and three other companies to form Caliburn International LLC: 2018
Month in which Caliburn announced plans for a $100 million initial public offering of stock, promising growth because of Trump's immigration policies — plans it withdrew after negative press coverage: 10/2018
Month in which former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, a former adviser to D.C. Capital Partners, joined Caliburn's board of directors: 5/2019 ()
In a victory for the movement to end migrant child detention, date on which North Carolina-based Bank of America, Caliburn's chief financier, announced it would no longer work with operators of immigrant detention centers and private prisons: 6/26/2019
(Click on figure to go to source.)
Tags
Sue Sturgis
Sue is the former editorial director of Facing South and the Institute for Southern Studies.