The personal, financial, and environmental costs of a border wall in Big Bend, locals revive opposition after Trump's announcement of a refinery in Brownsville and the Rio Grande Valley fights back after ICE shooting and raids, plus The Border Chronicle is seeking new paid subscribers!
“We love Big Bend the way it is. It does not need to change. We do not feel any danger, and we don’t want it to look like other places. And nothing makes a person who lives out here more mad than the idea of looking at a damn fence.”
Environmental advocates and residents say the long-proposed refinery threatens air quality and public health in a region already ringed by heavy industry.
The authors break down the billions generated by private immigration detention companies. An industry, they show, that is based on a false narrative.
Who profits from immigrant detention, and how is the money made? Geographers Nancy Hiemstra and Deirdre Conlon have investigated these questions for 10 years, producing one of the most thorough examinations of the industry. In today’s podcast, we discuss their findings in the new book Immigration Detention Inc: The Big Business of Locking Up Migrants.
This book comes at a crucial time as the Trump administration attempts to carry out a mass deportation plan that will be financed by an estimated $45 billion budget, via the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
We discuss all of this: the billions made not only by major prison companies like Geo Group and CoreCivic but also by subcontracted services such as food, medical care, and commissary. The authors highlight that substandard food and health services are part of the business model. We discuss the financial dependencies that local governments have developed through their revenue-sharing agreements with ICE. Additionally, we examine the rapid growth of the detention industry—from 7,000 people in the early 1990s to 60,000 today—and how this growth has accelerated in the last eight months under Trump.
Finally, the authors suggest solutions. “Chip away that detention is effective or necessary … this is really a false narrative,” Hiemstra says, and “peel away what makes detention profitable, and peel away the ability to make money off it.”
Hiemstra is also the author of Detain and Deport: The Chaotic U.S. Enforcement Regime. Conlon and Hiemstra also coedited the book Intimate Economies of Immigration Detention.
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Environmental advocates and residents say the long-proposed refinery threatens air quality and public health in a region already ringed by heavy industry.
ICE raids and detentions, together with a high-profile killing, have led Rio Grand Valley residents to mobilize—including even some local Republicans.
"I understand what people are going through because I lived it myself."
Logan Phillips was born in Tombstone, Arizona—a town best known for Old West-themed gunfight tourism. In his new book, Reckon, Phillips explores his relationship to the unusual setting of his childhood through themes of masculinity, history, and land.
Independent news, culture and context from the U.S.-Mexico border.
