When dealing with issues in America we often deal with what is on the surface and never get to the root of the issue. We hear a sound bite on the so called “News” and we run with it. With immigration we’ve been conditioned via a constant bombardment of sound bites and negative stories to see: An endless stream of Mexican Nationals streaming across our southern borders undocumented, a crush of Mexican Nationals overwhelming our social services system taking welfare and food stamps, an endless supply of low wage workers taking jobs from Americans especially African American workers etc… etc…etc.

Well I am not here to argue for or against these popular beliefs about our current immigration situation. What I do want to talk about is facts about our immigration system and other reasons why it needs to be reformed. What I do know contrary to what some would have us believe is that we have undocumented people here in America from almost every country on the globe not just Mexico. These people come through every port and across every border not just the Mexican border. There is one aspect of our current immigration situation that is not widely reported. There are profits to be made in this broken system and the profiteers may want to keep things the way they are. How do you profit from a broken immigration system?

Did you know that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has a mandate of 33,400 (ACLU, March 30, 2010) detainees per day? I like to connect dots and follow the money. So let’s see what we have here. If the cost of detaining a person is $150/day and you multiply that by 33,400, you quickly see that detaining people can be a very lucrative business to the tune of $1.9 billion per year. Also, did you know that the same people that run the private prisons of the prison industrial complex are in the detention center business? Do you think that they and their congressional lobbyist are in favor of meaningful immigration reform or do they want to protect the status quo?

We live in a time that more money goes into swaying public opinion with sound bites and misinformation than any concrete effort to our citizens.

To see more visit: https://www.aclu.org/immigrants-rights/controversial-memo-immigration-detention-quotas-raises-doubts-about-ice-leadership