John Oliver discusses ICE detention facilities, who’s in them, who runs them and – of course – why it is totally understandable if our studio audience would rather watch Drew Barrymore’s show instead.
Connect with Last Week Tonight online...
Subscribe to the Last Week Tonight YouTube channel for more almost news as it almost happens: www.youtube.com/lastweektonight
Find Last Week Tonight on Facebook like your mom would: www.facebook.com/lastweektonight
Follow us on Twitter for news about jokes and jokes about news: www.twitter.com/lastweektonight
Visit our official site for all that other stuff at once: www.hbo.com/lastweektonight
Connect with Last Week Tonight online...
Subscribe to the Last Week Tonight YouTube channel for more almost news as it almost happens: www.youtube.com/lastweektonight
Find Last Week Tonight on Facebook like your mom would: www.facebook.com/lastweektonight
Follow us on Twitter for news about jokes and jokes about news: www.twitter.com/lastweektonight
Visit our official site for all that other stuff at once: www.hbo.com/lastweektonight
Kategorie
🗞
NewsTranskript
00:00Unsere Hauptgeschichte heute geht um die Migration.
00:02Das überraschende Thema ist die eigentliche Valentine's Day-Tweet der White House, die riecht nach
00:07Rosen sind rot, Violenz ist blau, komm hier illegal und wir werden dich verfolgen.
00:11Obwohl, ich denke, das ist genau der Art Romantik, den man erwartet von einer Hausaufgabe von diesem liebenden Paar.
00:17Seit Trump aufgerufen ist, hat er eine große Show gemacht, in der Eis-Migration-Raids durchgeführt werden.
00:22Oft mit News-Kameras und sogar Dr. Phil-Tagessens.
00:26Obwohl, es hat nicht immer gut geklappt.
00:28Zum Beispiel, haben sie Apartment-Komplexe in Colorado besiegt, die offensichtlich
00:32Gang-Aktivitätszentren waren, nur mit sehr wenigen Angreifen zurückgekehrt wurden
00:36und etwas verunsichertes Foto.
00:38Als das Team Tür zu Tür ging, fanden sie blutige Wälder, aber keine Gang-Mitglieder.
00:43Das gesamte Komplex war virtuell leer.
00:46Bei einem zweiten Trenday-Aragua-Link-Komplex,
00:50wurde Eis von Aktivisten getroffen, die sie gezwungen haben.
01:20... to implement the largest deportation operation in American history.
01:24And to do that, it seems every week, he devises a new place to send migrants
01:28from Costa Rica to Panama to even this.
01:31The latest piece of the mass deportation puzzle,
01:34bringing as many as 30,000 criminal migrants to the Navy base at Guantanamo Bay.
01:40So we're gonna send them out to Guantanamo.
01:42This will double our capacity immediately, right?
01:47I mean, yeah, it is.
01:51Although calling Gitmo a tough place to get out of is a bit of an understatement.
01:55A corn maze is a tough place to get out of.
01:58A low-hanging hammock is tough to get out of.
02:01Gitmo is a legal black hole where the Constitution goes to die.
02:05Last month, Trump actually flew 178 Venezuelan migrants there,
02:09only to quickly reverse course and fly them out
02:11after the administration started facing lawsuits.
02:14And look, most experts agree that for both legal and logistical reasons,
02:18Gitmo is unlikely to house 30,000 migrants anytime soon.
02:22And what that means is, most of the people who get arrested
02:25are gonna be funneled into our existing immigration detention facilities.
02:29And I know we've talked on this show a lot about our immigration system's problems before,
02:33from the fact our immigration courts are arbitrary and incredibly slow,
02:36to the many holes in our asylum process,
02:38to the truth that for many, there is no way to come in the right way,
02:42to the failings of Joe Biden's immigration policies and the cruelty of Trump's.
02:45But tonight, we're gonna focus very narrowly on detention centers.
02:49They don't tend to get talked about much,
02:51despite the fact a lot of people go through them.
02:54ICE currently has the budget to hold just over 41,000 people on any given day.
02:58And last year, more than 260,000 people cycled through ICE detention in total.
03:03But Trump is already talking about sending even more people into that system,
03:08which in some quarters, is cause for celebration.
03:11After the election, stock prices for private prison companies like GeoGroup and CoreCivic soared,
03:16with their CEOs each bragging to investors about how much money they were going to make.
03:21The GeoGroup was built for this unique moment in our company's country's history.
03:28And the opportunities that it will bring.
03:31I've worked at CoreCivic for 32 years,
03:33and this is truly one of the most exciting periods in my career with the company.
03:38Look, as a general rule, if something happens that causes a private prison company to get really excited,
03:44that thing was bad.
03:46If you ever come home and your spouse tells you,
03:49honey, I did something today and the GeoGroup is super excited about it,
03:53you are in for a relationship-altering conversation.
03:56And the thing is, immigration detention facilities are by law not supposed to be a punishment.
04:02ICE's own website even states that detention is non-punitive.
04:07Though as you're about to see, that's like claiming that the ocean is not wet,
04:10or that the Wicked movie wasn't 30 minutes too long.
04:13It is a bold assertion sharply undercut by empirical evidence.
04:18So given all of that, tonight, let's talk about ICE detention facilities
04:22and try and answer a few basic questions.
04:24Who's in them? Who runs them? And what's it actually like inside them?
04:28And let's start with who's getting sent there.
04:30Trump and those around him often try and sell their immigration roundups as being about cracking down on crime.
04:36Here's his press secretary answering a question about exactly who was arrested in the first round of ICE raids.
04:42Of the 3,500 arrests ICE has made so far since President Trump came back into office,
04:47can you just tell us the numbers? How many have a criminal record versus those who are just in the country illegally?
04:52All of them, because they illegally broke our nation's laws and therefore they are criminals, as far as this administration goes.
04:57I know the last administration didn't see it that way, so it's a big culture shift in our nation
05:01to view someone who breaks our immigration laws as a criminal, but that's exactly what they are.
05:05Well, hold on, because that is not actually true.
05:08While entering the U.S. without authorization can be a criminal offense,
05:11many of those who are undocumented entered legally and overstayed their visas.
05:15And simply being undocumented is a civil violation, not a criminal one.
05:20That is an important distinction that her boss should frankly understand, given that he has committed both.
05:25And to be clear, more than 50% of those in ICE detention have no criminal records
05:31and many more have only minor offenses, including traffic violations.
05:35What's more, a lot of them are already in the asylum process.
05:38As of last year, almost half of those in ICE custody were seeking asylum.
05:43And that is actually true of some of those who got scooped up in Colorado last month.
05:47One man got detained, even though he'd done everything he was supposed to do.
05:51He'd committed no crimes and had an asylum hearing court date.
05:55And yet despite that, listen to his brother describe what happened.
05:59On Wednesday, Luis' brother Jonathan was driving him to work.
06:03They didn't get past the parking lot at the Cedar Run apartment complex
06:08where ICE detained at least five people as part of a raid Wednesday.
06:12They asked us for documents from here.
06:16We showed them the asylum processes, the form the court stamped for us.
06:20Luis says officers wouldn't accept his brother's paperwork,
06:24even though he showed his asylum documents as he waits on a work permit.
06:28He has so many questions about how his brother was detained without a criminal record.
06:34If he doesn't have a deportation order, how can they take him?
06:37Yeah, that's a good question.
06:39It's actually one of many things I find hard to understand about watching that,
06:42including why those agents were wearing camouflage while doing it.
06:46You're in a parking lot, not dense foliage.
06:49If you actually wanted to blend in,
06:51you should have dressed up like a Claire's Accessories in a strip mall.
06:56The thing is, holding someone in detention is only meant to be done in limited circumstances,
07:00like if they're a flight risk or to make sure they show up for an immigration hearing.
07:04But the vast majority do show up for those hearings because they want their case heard.
07:09And for those with asylum claims, like that guy's brother,
07:13a recent study found of those who weren't detained,
07:1695% attended all of their immigration court hearings.
07:20Now, there are some immigrants who are subject to what's called mandatory detention,
07:24if they've been accused of breaking the law.
07:26That used to be confined to serious offenses like murder or gun trafficking.
07:31But that all changed when Bill Clinton expanded it to also cover minor crimes,
07:36from low-level drug convictions to writing a bad check.
07:39And those convictions don't even have to be recent.
07:42Take this man, who was brought from Jamaica to the U.S. by his family when he was a teenager.
07:47He served in the military, but after completing his service,
07:50pled guilty to marijuana possession in 1997.
07:53He went on, started a business and a family, but then in 2010, this suddenly happened.
08:24That is ridiculous.
08:26Clearly, no one should be punished for a minor mistake they made 14 years earlier.
08:31Otherwise, I'd have hell to pay for playing Vanity Smurf in the 2011 Smurfs movie.
08:36I was already punished when I saw it, and again, when I had to pose for this press photo.
08:40I think I've suffered enough.
08:44The point is, that Clinton-era expansion supercharged the detainee population.
08:49The point is, that Clinton-era expansion supercharged the detainee population,
08:53which passed 20,000 in 2001, only to expand through Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden,
08:59to the point where we now have the world's largest immigration detention system.
09:03Which would be a massive embarrassment.
09:06Because America has the world's largest of a lot of things,
09:09and they're mostly either awesome or at worst, fantastically weird.
09:12We have the world's largest paint can, the world's largest office chair,
09:16and my personal favorite, the world's largest basket.
09:19It is seven stories tall, not including the handles.
09:23And fun fact, it doubles as the headquarters for Longaberger,
09:26a basket manufacturing company in Ohio.
09:28It was apparently the brainchild of the company's founder, who wrote in his memoir,
09:32I figured, if Walt Disney could build an empire around a mouse,
09:35the Longaberger home office building could resemble a basket.
09:39Adding, whenever I talked about it, people looked at me like I was nuts.
09:44Sadly, the company vacated the basket in 2016,
09:48and it's been abandoned ever since.
09:50Though you can find videos online of admirers who've made pilgrimages
09:54to see it since then, like this one.
09:57I don't think the pictures are doing justice.
09:59This looks way, way bigger in person than when I was seeing it in photos
10:05for a very long time.
10:07And here I am, in the shadow of a seven-story basket.
10:14More companies need to do this.
10:16Build their offices and headquarters in oversized buildings
10:22shaped like their products.
10:24I could not agree more with that.
10:26I've been saying the same thing for years.
10:28There is nothing I want more than for General Mills to be housed
10:31inside of a giant Cheerio, or for L'Oreal to be housed inside of a giant lipstick,
10:35or McDonald's to be housed inside of a giant ice cream machine
10:38that's always out of service.
10:40All that said, I'd argue being home to the empty, decaying carcass
10:43of the world's largest basket office is still significantly less embarrassing
10:47than being home to the world's largest immigration detention system.
10:50See, I brought it back home in the end.
10:52I bet you forgot what I was even talking about,
10:54but I knew where I was going with this.
10:56I always know sometimes.
10:58And while the average length of stay for a person in ICE custody
11:02is just over 44 days, that is just an average.
11:05There are more than 2,800 people who've been detained
11:08from six months to a year,
11:10and nearly 700 who've been detained for longer than that.
11:13And that is the thing.
11:14If you are sent into detention, you don't know how long you'll be there.
11:18There is no set timetable for your release.
11:22And even some of those in charge of these centers
11:24can almost acknowledge the problems with that.
11:27It's not like a jail inmate that's in here
11:30is sentenced to a certain time.
11:32They know the day they get out.
11:33They have no idea when they're going to leave.
11:36And I know, I mean, if I was in their place,
11:38it would be very difficult to not know when I'm leaving.
11:44You know, people see it sometimes as a punishment.
11:47We don't punish.
11:49So it's... I know it's viewed that way,
11:52but we aren't going to hold somebody to punish them.
11:56OK, but the thing is, being locked up
11:58and not knowing when you get to leave
12:00is basically the definition of a punishment.
12:03Just ask this studio audience right now.
12:06Not only are they stuck here,
12:07they have no idea when this is going to be over.
12:09They're just trapped in this room, getting sadder by the minute,
12:12wishing this was a taping of Drew.
12:14Sorry, guys, she's in the studio next door.
12:17There's a cooking demonstration today.
12:19They're giving out blenders.
12:21So that is who is in these facilities.
12:24But where exactly are they?
12:26Well, sometimes ICE detains people in local jails,
12:29which is already a little weird,
12:31given that, again, ICE detention is supposed to be non-punitive.
12:34But the vast majority, over 90%, in fact,
12:37are held in facilities owned or operated by private prison companies.
12:41That is why those CEOs were so excited on their earnings calls.
12:46These companies make a ton of money out of detaining immigrants.
12:50In fact, America's very first private prison
12:53was built for immigration detention.
12:56American business is becoming bullish on prisons.
12:59Firms like the Corrections Corporation of America in Nashville, Tennessee,
13:03believe there will be no business like jail business in the 1980s.
13:07This construction site in Houston, Texas,
13:10will soon become the first completely free enterprise prison in the United States,
13:15designed, built, owned and operated by a business corporation.
13:19It is being built for the U.S. Justice Department
13:22to detain up to 300 aliens
13:24charged with entering this country illegally
13:26and awaiting deportation hearings.
13:28The market is enormous.
13:30There are over a half a million people in this country
13:33incarcerated at the present time.
13:35So there is a lot there.
13:37The sheer unblinking creepiness of that man alone is a little distracting.
13:41As is the weirdly upbeat tone of the rest of the segment.
13:44No business like jail business?
13:46Isn't something you should be saying in a news report?
13:49Sounds like a musical where Bernadette Peters shanks someone in their sleep.
13:54And the fact is, business has been good for private prisons ever since.
13:58CoreCivic and GeoGroup derive respectively 27 and 30 percent of their revenues
14:03from contracts for ICE detention alone.
14:06And you can see why this is such an appealing model for ICE.
14:09They get to outsource the headaches and responsibilities of these facilities.
14:13Sometimes ICE even adds another layer of removing
14:16by contracting with local governments
14:18who then in turn contract with private companies.
14:20That is attractive because those particular arrangements
14:23are subjected to significantly less scrutiny
14:25than is required for ordinary federal contracts.
14:27So this system seems to work great for the companies and for ICE
14:31but it works much less well for anyone who needs to go through it.
14:35So let's talk about what these facilities are like.
14:38And let's start with the fact they're often located in incredibly remote areas.
14:42That is actually a big deal
14:44because it means detainees can be cut off from legal representation.
14:47Some facilities have only one immigration attorney within a 100-mile radius
14:50for every 200 people detained.
14:52And because phone calls are often denied or difficult to schedule,
14:56lawyers like this one can spend a ridiculous amount of time
14:59just trying to get to their clients.
15:01So I leave my house in the mornings, get on the road,
15:06typically just try to power all the way through to the detention center.
15:10We typically go only to Pine Prairie,
15:13and so that's about a three, three and a half hour drive.
15:16Today we're making the trip up to Jackson for some special cases,
15:20and so that's a four and a half hour, five hours, depending on traffic, drive.
15:25Yeah, that is a big problem.
15:27Especially given among detained immigrants,
15:29those with representation were twice as likely to obtain immigration relief
15:32as those without.
15:33So lawyers are very important.
15:35I know I make fun of them sometimes
15:37because lawyer used to be this guy's job,
15:40but without them we would be fucked.
15:43There'd be no good wife, no Michael Clayton.
15:45There'd definitely be no this show.
15:47We'd be shut down years ago
15:49after being sued into oblivion for sexual harassment by Adam Driver.
15:53And that is before you get to the conditions inside these facilities,
15:57which can be hard to see as access is so heavily controlled.
16:01The glimpses you tend to get are either from heavily managed tours
16:04given to local news crews,
16:05or videos produced by the facilities themselves,
16:08like this one about a New Mexico facility
16:10owned by a company called MTC.
16:13The Otero facility hosts various sporting tournaments
16:15and other activities to keep the men engaged.
16:19Just like the Imperial facility,
16:21detainees have access to medical and dental care.
16:24MTC staff are trained to treat detainees
16:26with great respect and dignity.
16:28We call it a bionic believe it or not I care approach.
16:36Okay.
16:37If your starting point to saying I care is believe it or not,
16:42you've already got off on the wrong foot.
16:44If I told you, believe it or not,
16:46I don't draw erotic fan fiction of the Honey Nut Cheerios Bee,
16:49the very fact I said believe it or not suggests
16:52you already assumed that I do.
16:54It's an assumption that is already damning on its own.
16:56Because I don't.
16:57He's not really my type cartoon Bumblebee-wise.
17:00This, for instance, does nothing for me.
17:02Nor does this.
17:03Not even this one.
17:05And for what it's worth,
17:06I definitely didn't draw any of these myself.
17:08Believe it or not.
17:11And while they paint a lovely picture there,
17:14the fact is, conditions in ICE detention can be brutal.
17:17For instance, detainees are often expected to do
17:19a lot of the cooking and the cleaning themselves.
17:21And while ICE does require the jobs to be paid,
17:23the amount is pitifully small.
17:25In many places, it's just one dollar a day.
17:28And detainees who refuse to work
17:30can be threatened with the withholding of food
17:32or disciplinary segregation,
17:34also known as solitary confinement.
17:37GEO Group was once sued over this at one of its facilities.
17:40And in court, made a bold argument
17:42that the judge wanted no part of.
17:45GEO says, even if it comes down to choosing
17:48between punishment or work, that's still a choice.
17:51Listen to this exchange between GEO's lawyer
17:54and a judge who questions the company's rationale.
17:58Disciplinary segregation can be used as a sanction
18:01for the refusal to work.
18:03They make a decision each time
18:05whether they're going to consent to work or not.
18:09Or eat. Or be put in isolation. Right?
18:14I mean...
18:16Yeah, it's... I mean, slaves had a choice.
18:20Right?
18:22Wow, that is not great.
18:24When a judge is likening your client's practices to slavery,
18:27that's generally a pretty bad sign for your case.
18:30There really shouldn't even be a verdict at that point.
18:32A trap door should just open up beneath you
18:34while they call the next case in.
18:36And that's not the only time
18:38detainees have been subjected to solitary.
18:40One study found over a five-year period,
18:42ICE facilities placed people in solitary 14,000 times
18:46with an average duration of 27 days.
18:49Well exceeding the 15-day threshold
18:51human rights experts have found constitutes torture.
18:54And that is not all.
18:55ICE itself reported that between 2017 and last year,
18:59at least 70 detained migrants died while in its custody.
19:02And the details in some of these cases are horrifying.
19:05Take Kamyar Samimi.
19:07He immigrated from Iran in the 70s
19:09and became a lawful permanent resident.
19:11In 2005, he pled guilty to possessing
19:13less than a gram of cocaine
19:15and was sentenced to community service.
19:17But 12 years later, ICE suddenly decided
19:19his drug conviction rendered him deportable.
19:22That's already bad enough.
19:23But while he was held in detention,
19:25the staff cut him off from the methadone
19:27he took to manage his drug addiction.
19:29Completely cold turkey.
19:30He started vomiting blood clots,
19:32but the staff delayed several more hours
19:34before calling 911.
19:35And Samimi died just two weeks after entering the facility.
19:39And this is how his daughter found out.
19:42I got a text from my co-worker
19:44letting me know that an immigration officer
19:47had stopped by my place of work
19:49and had left a business card and wanted to speak with me.
19:52And he answered the phone and told me
19:56that my father had suffered cardiac arrest,
20:00that he was taken to a hospital,
20:02and that he was pronounced dead.
20:04My dad died on Saturday, and I got the call on Monday.
20:08I think it's very strange that ICE observes business hours
20:14to tell people that their loved ones are dead.
20:16Yes, strange is definitely one way to describe it.
20:20A fucking disgrace would be another.
20:22And incredibly, that story is not even a one-off.
20:25One study found 95% of deaths in ICE custody
20:29were preventable or possibly preventable
20:31if ICE had provided clinically appropriate medical care.
20:35One of the cases it cites is a man from Angola
20:37who began to demonstrate symptoms of mental illness.
20:39He refused to eat meals, losing 30 pounds in about 30 days.
20:42At one point, he agreed to drink Ensure,
20:45but the staff never provided any
20:47because the ICE coordinator responsible
20:49was trying to find it at a reasonable or discounted price.
20:52That facility, by the way, was the same one in that upbeat video
20:56about how, believe it or not, they care.
20:58So I guess they mean that phrase
21:00in the exact same way Ripley's believe it or not means it.
21:03Look, we're completely full of shit.
21:05How you feel about it is really up to you.
21:08And if after all of this you're thinking,
21:10well, it sure seems like we're doing
21:12an incredible amount of damage unnecessarily,
21:14you are absolutely right.
21:15And don't just take that from me.
21:17Here is a former director of ICE
21:19basically saying the same thing.
21:21We detain lots of people who are not dangerous
21:23and aren't a flight risk, and it makes no sense to me.
21:26We should ask ourselves a larger question,
21:28which is, why are we in this business?
21:30What do we get out of this?
21:32And it's just the politics of it, right?
21:34The politics, public likes to hear the tension.
21:36It sounds tough.
21:37I mean, that is true.
21:39The public does love things that sound tough.
21:41It's probably why Mark Sinclair made his stage name Vin Diesel
21:45and not Reginald Chucklewums the Third.
21:47But when he asked there, why are we in this business,
21:51the very fact this is a business is part of the answer.
21:55And that is a fact not lost
21:57on some of those inside these facilities.
21:59By keeping us here for seven or eight months,
22:02they are making money on us,
22:04because we are a business for them.
22:06Immigration in this country is a business.
22:08He's right.
22:09Immigration is a business like any other
22:11for-profit endeavor in America,
22:13whether it's Toxic Rage Circle Jerk, Inc.,
22:15the Small Business Elimination Omni Company,
22:18or Pottery Barn.
22:19I actually don't have anything bad to say about Pottery Barn.
22:22They make high-quality home goods at affordable prices.
22:25Keep doing what you're doing, Pottery Barn.
22:27But the thing is, everything I've shown you so far
22:30has been from before Trump took office for a second time.
22:33What comes next will almost certainly be worse.
22:36Congress recently expanded mandatory detention even further
22:39to cover undocumented people
22:41who are charged with any theft-related offense.
22:43Trump's also started placing migrants in federal prisons
22:46and is reopening facilities that have been forced to shutter
22:49amid allegations of unsafe or crowded conditions.
22:51So, what do we do?
22:53Well, at the federal level, honestly,
22:55for the next few years, we're fucked.
22:58But some states have found ways to mitigate the harm.
23:02Illinois, for instance, barred private companies
23:05from contracting with local communities to detain immigrants.
23:08It also prohibited cities and counties
23:10from contracting with ICE to house or detain immigrants
23:13at local jails, which is great.
23:15I would argue all states should be doing that.
23:18And to its credit, New Mexico is considering
23:20a similar proposal right now.
23:22Look, Trump's government is clearly going to do everything
23:26in its power to act as callously as possible
23:28for the next four years.
23:30And I know no one wants to hear another heartfelt soliloquy
23:33about how this administration's immigration policies
23:35fly in the face of America's founding ideals.
23:37We are well past that.
23:39But moving forward, we're gonna have to find ways
23:43to push back hard at the state and local level
23:46against those determined to score political points
23:49at the expense of an incredibly vulnerable population.
23:52And to anyone who continues to support that agenda,
23:55there is really only one thing to say.
24:04Yeah. Exactly.
24:16Copyright WDR 2021