Jesse Franzblau is the Associate Policy Director at the National Immigrant Justice Center, a Chicago-based nonprofit that provides legal services to immigrants and advocates for their rights.
Franzblau spent years documenting rights abuses in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands for the organization’s Transparency and Human Rights Project. He now advocates for better immigration policies in Congress.
In this podcast, Franzblau explains how the U.S. became home to the world’s largest immigrant detention system, and how it was built by both Republicans and Democrats. From the beginning, private prison corporations such as CoreCivic and the Geo Group built immigration detention, which has become its own booming industry, especially now that Trump’s massive spending bill, passed on July 4, will pour billions into the detention and deportation system over the next four years. In addition to defining the problem, Franzblau shares how the for-profit immigrant detention economy could be dismantled.
For more context:
A guide for members of congress visiting detention facilities: https://immigrantjustice.org/press-release/ice-detention-oversight-toolkit-release/
An explainer on the impact of HR1 funding: https://immigrantjustice.org/research/explainer-how-congress-codified-hateful-and-extreme-anti-immigrant-policies-by-passing-trumps-budget-bill/
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