A few years ago when desperate families in Central America sent their children North to get away from gangs, governmental threats, and the fear of death, a large number of children began showing up at our southern border.

People here responded two ways to this. One was to realize the reality these children were escaping, and the other was to ask how parents could even think of sending their children on such a long journey, ignoring that these were the uneducated masses that might not realize how long that journey would be.

The former response brought about compassionate treatment, while the latter resulted in uninformed political posturing.

Parent are now coming up with their children for the same reasins, and the response here is the same.

The business of housing, transporting, and watching over migrant children detained after being separated from the parents they arrived with is a billion-dollar business.

One program, the nonprofit Southwest Key Programs, that runs shelters and provides other services to immigrant children in federal custody, has won at least $955 million in federal contracts since 2015.

And it is only one such program.  There are a dozen contractors operating more than 30 facilities in Texas alone, with 100 shelters in 16 other states.

Until the separation of some 2,300 migrant children from their families under Trump, the companies were under the radar, and in some areas of Texas are the largest employers with employees required to sign nondisclosure agreements that prevent them from discussing the conditions in the facilities to those who cannot see in.

Trump’s latest call to have families stay together at facilities was accompanied by a rather large Ka-ching, as it means millions more are to be made in contracts for private shelter operators, construction companies, and defense contractors.

In some cases contracts are based on the “pay for play” plan.

In 2016, a GEO Group subsidiary donated a quarter of a million dollars to a pro-Trump super-PAC, and GEO Group itself and the company CoreCivic contributed a further $225,000 to the PAC to get around ethics laws that prohibit government contractors from contributing directly to campaigns.

In his first week in office, President Trump cut limitations on deportation targets, and within his first 100 days he had more than 41,000 immigrants put into the detention system. GEO Group and CoreCivic stock prices rose by 140%, and continued to climb with family separations.

GEO Group and CoreCivic are structured as Real Estate Investment Trusts so they can avoid paying their taxes, giving their shareholders 90% of what should be their taxable income.

Like private prisons that are able to promote policies that increase their profits, detention companies encourage detention and the incentive policies that cut costs at the expense of immigrant safety and health.

Privately run detention centers have been the object of lawsuits dealing with inhumane conditions, medical negligence, sexual assault, and forced-labor, conditions that cause lasting and severe damage to children and their families, while they make a buck.

Comprehensive Health Services, Inc., a private, for-profit company housing immigrant children, claimed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that Trump’s immigration policies were driving “significant growth.” It costs $750 per day to house children in some of its detention centers supported by American taxpayers.

The U.S. government recently removed more than 300 children from one facility where they were detained, and where they were caring for each other with inadequate food, water, and sanitation. The older children had been taking care of infants and toddlers, going without showers for days, and getting little food. Some 15 children were sick with the flu and another 10 were in medical quarantine. Some had been locked inside the facility for three weeks.

They had no soap or toothbrushes, their blankets were pieces of Mylar, and they slept on the concrete floor.

Government lawyers have argued in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that supplying things like soap and toothbrushes should not be required under the legal settlement agreed to between the government and migrant families in 1997 that required that facilities for children must be “safe and sanitary” because the agreement did not specify the need to supply hygienic items and that, therefore, the government did not need to.

That agreement, known as the Flores Settlement, also calls for children to be held by the Border Patrol in their short-term stations for no longer than 72 hours after which they are transferred to the custody of Health and Human Services, and housed in migrant youth facilities around the country through its Office of Refugee Resettlement.

One of the judges at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals hearing, Judge William Fletcher, just had to ask,

“Are you arguing seriously that you do not read the agreement as requiring you to do anything other than what I just described: cold all night long, lights on all night long, sleeping on concrete and you’ve got an aluminum foil blanket? I find that inconceivable that the government would say that is safe and sanitary.”

Another judge on the court panel, Judge A. Wallace Tashima, was also taken aback by this attitude.

“To me it’s more like it’s within everybody’s common understanding: If you don’t have a toothbrush, if you don’t have soap, if you don’t have a blanket, it’s not safe and sanitary.”

Mike Pence agreed the children should have soap, water, and food, but also said,

“My point is it’s all a part of the appropriations process. Congress needs to provide additional support to deal with the crisis at our southern border.”

But then he seemed to go into the next room only to wonder why he wandered in there.

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