The left is taking a decidedly anti-Biden turn these days on immigration. That old leftist stalwart, The New Republic, has published an April 12 article titled, “The Biden Administration’s Broken Promise on Immigrant Detention,” in which it charges that: “The administration once promised to close privately run immigrant detention centers. Instead, it’s packing them full.”
The article states that while the Biden administration came into office with a pledge to end the use of private prisons and detention centers, the number of immigrants detained in privately run facilities has increased by 13 percent since January, reaching nearly 24,000 people as of late March.
Why is this happening, asks TNR? The answer lies in the contracts that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has with private companies like GEO Group and CoreCivic, which operate most of the immigrant detention centers in the country. These contracts often include clauses that guarantee a minimum number of beds to be filled, regardless of the actual need or demand. This means that DHS has to pay for empty beds if it does not send enough immigrants to these facilities, creating a perverse incentive to keep them full.
Amusingly, the piece appears to complain that the practice wastes taxpayer money, a complaint seldom voiced by the left, which thrives on wasted tax money. More importantly, by TNR’s standards, is that the admittedly criminal trespassers in America are being punished for their crimes, as opposed to being rewarded, as the left thinks they should be. The article says that private detention centers have a long history of abuse, neglect, and poor conditions and pose a serious risk of COVID-19 outbreaks, as many of them lack adequate testing, isolation, and vaccination protocols.
The article concludes with the claim that detaining immigrants who do not pose a threat to public safety or flight risk is unnecessary and cruel, especially when there are more humane and cost-effective alternatives available, such as community-based supervision and case management.
Most important of all is the obvious fact that the establishment left is beginning to turn on Joe Biden, about whose first couple of years they could do nothing but sing the praises. Now that a new election day is approaching, the demented old codger is not looking all that praiseworthy to them.