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Delaney Hall Detention Facility, Newark, New Jersey.
(Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)
Private Prisons and ICE Exploit Loopholes, Harm Communities
Jul 11, 2026
While Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) terrorizes Black and brown communities with racial profiling, kidnappings, inhumane treatment, fatal abuse, and killings, private prison investors are asking how ICE can detain more people to increase their profits. Private prison corporations have long profited from immigration enforcement, but they are expecting a financial windfall under the current administration. These corporations are politically and financially situated to rapidly increase detention capacity and cash in on the president’s goal of deporting one million people per year. Stopping these corporations from lining politicians’ campaign coffers is a necessary first step in ensuring that our government is accountable to the people it serves, rather than the corporations it contracts with.
ICE and private prison corporations have long had a symbiotic relationship. Ninety percent of ICE's detainees were already being held in facilities owned or operated by private prison corporations before President Trump began his second term. CoreCivic and GEO Group, two of the largest private prison corporations that lead the multi-billion dollar industry, have been contracting with immigration enforcement for decades. By 2023, ICE contracts accounted for 43 percent of CoreCivic’s revenue and 30 percent of GEO Group’s revenue. The majority of each corporation’s lobbyists have held government positions, and GEO Group’s board of directors “has extensive links with ICE.” The relationship between private prisons and ICE is the embodiment of the “'revolving door’ between the federal government and the private sector.”
These private prison corporations have donated millions to the current administration to advance their own interests. CoreCivic and GEO Group spent $1.77 million and $1.38 million, respectively, lobbying the federal government in 2024. These corporations and the people that run them spent millions more in contributions to candidates and PACs that same year. While corporations that contract with the federal government are technically barred from making such direct political contributions, legal loopholes permit CoreCivic and GEO Group’s “PACs, their individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate family members” to make such political contributions.
It should come as no surprise, then, that since Trump's second term began, CoreCivic and GEO Group have secured additional lucrative government contracts with ICE, enjoyed soaring profits, and seen their stocks rise. These companies are directly profiting from the administration’s racist immigration agenda and its dismantling of due process. Reporters last year found that CoreCivic made $116.5 million in profits in 2025, “an almost 70 percent increase from the previous year.” The company expects higher profits in 2026 to the tune of $147.5 million to $157.5 million.
This projected growth aligns with CoreCivic and GEO Group’s successful lobbying in connection with H.R. 1, the “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act, to increase Congress’s appropriations to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). “Much of [the] focus” of CoreCivic and GEO Group’s 2024 lobbying was on DHS appropriations. When Congress passed H.R. 1 in 2025, adding $75 billion over four years to ICE’s base $10 billion budget, ICE became the highest-funded law enforcement agency in America.
Nearly two-thirds of the H.R. 1 budget allocated to ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is dedicated to building detention facilities capable of detaining more than 100,000 people per year, while the remaining third is intended to increase ICE’s capacity through hiring and training new officers. This is just one slice of the more than $170 billion that H.R. 1 allocated for immigration enforcement.
In a similar vein, in June of 2026, Congress passed legislation to pump nearly $70 billion more into ICE and CBP’s already inflated budget over the next three years. Almost 90 percent of that additional funding is intended to increase ICE and CBP’s detention efforts and capacity, and fund improvements to their technological capabilities.
ICE’s enormous budget is expected to benefit CoreCivic and GEO Group by allowing them to reopen their idle facilities and construct new ones in record time. The American Immigration Council estimates that with the funding from H.R.1, “ICE could potentially acquire enough detention beds to house 135,000 people at any given time, more than three times the entire capacity of the system at the time President Trump took office.” This expansion has grave implications for noncitizens and citizens alike, as more and more people are subject to ICE detention and inhumane conditions in these facilities.
The stakes of ICE's expansion are, unsurprisingly, highest for Black and brown people. While the government does not publish race and ethnicity data concerning the people it detains, ICE has made no secret of its blatant racial profiling. In one particularly egregious example, in DHS’s 2025 national media campaign, former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem was depicted on camera saying, “if you are here illegally, you’re next,” while mugshot-style photos of Black and brown men were shown in the background. DHS’ Operation Metro Surge, which terrorized communities in Minnesota beginning in December 2025, targeted Somali and Latino residents. This dovetails with the United States’ history of disproportionately policing and incarcerating Black and brown people. The big money supporting the expansion of ICE treats the capture and abuse of Black and brown people as a business demanding more infrastructure, systems, and technology.
Private prisons are not the only type of corporate interest that profits from ICE terrorizing Black and brown people. The government also has lucrative contracts with hundreds of companies that provide everything from “surveillance tech and airline transportation to cloud services and bank financing.” ICE’s top ten contractors have benefited the most, as ICE concentrated nearly 70 percent of its spending on those contractors in the first full year of this administration. The best-known of these contractors is perhaps Palantir, a tech surveillance company that spent $5.9 million on lobbying expenses in 2024. And while top Palantir executives’ ideological views align with the current administration’s white supremacist rhetoric, and that ideology no doubt informs their business, Palantir’s sheer financial benefits are undeniable. In April of 2025, DHS signed a $30 million contract with Palantir to develop more comprehensive migrant tracking systems, and in February of 2026, Palantir secured a $1 billion software purchase agreement with DHS.
These corporations have a vested interest in ICE’s expansion and in its violent detention practices – that interest is in direct conflict with the will of voters. Polling shows that ICE’s unpopularity has increased. A “sizeable majority” (over 60 percent) of voters believe that ICE has “gone too far” and is “making Americans less safe.” Big money in politics has drowned out public opinion thus far, however. The political influence of private prison corporations and other corporate interests has led to a “Deportation-Industrial Complex,” which the Brennan Center for Justice describes as “an enforcement machine with financial and political constituencies that will outlast this administration.” The financial and political power of this enforcement machine far exceeds that of everyday voters. For example, when H.R. 1 increased ICE’s budget sevenfold, it bypassed the normal discretionary appropriations process, which typically funds defense and immigration. ICE has access to its new, incredibly large budget, whether or not Congress passes its annual budget. As a result, ICE continued to operate while the government was partially shut down in early 2026, even though the shutdown was intended to put pressure on lawmakers to overhaul ICE’s practices after the agency killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
As long as private prisons and similar corporate interests profit from ICE’s harm to Black and brown people, and as long as they can use legal loopholes to make unchecked political contributions to support ICE’s terror, the government will prioritize their interests. In the meantime, ICE continues to racially profile, harm people with impunity, and keep detention center conditions deplorable. The administration also continues to ensure that there is a large pool of people for ICE to target, pausing processing of green card applications and keeping pathways to citizenship scarce.
A thriving democracy cannot allow these monied interests to dictate immigration policy and prioritize profits over people. A critical step in reducing the outsized political power of private prisons is for Congress to enact legislation that closes legal loopholes and strictly limits political donations from government contractors’ direct associates, such as PACs, corporate executives, and major shareholders. Banning these contributions would go a long way toward severing the financial ties that currently allow corporate interests to co-opt our democracy and influence immigration policy. Other campaign finance reforms, such as stricter disclosure requirements and conflicts-of-interest laws, are also necessary to rein in the inordinate role of money in politics. Such measures will help reduce pay-to-play incentives that currently enable private prison corporations and ICE to turn a hefty profit by terrorizing Black and brown people and harming our communities.
Joshua Harmon is a Research and Data Analytics Senior Associate at Dēmos, a non-profit public policy organization working to build a just, inclusive, multiracial democracy and economy.
Neda Khoshkhoo is Interim Director of Democracy at Dēmos, where she focuses on crafting policy solutions for democratic reform, racial justice, and immigrant justice.
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Charles De Ketelaere #17 of Belgium scores his team’s first goal past Unai Simon #23 of Spain during the FIFA World Cup 2026 Quarter Final match between Spain and Belgium at Los Angeles Stadium on July 10, 2026, in Inglewood, California.
(Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images)
What the World Cup Teaches Us About Democracy
Jul 11, 2026
As live sporting events go, nothing comes close to the World Cup. I was in the stands when South Africa, my birth country, hosted the event in 2010 after decades of exclusion from global athletics. In June of this year, I had a full-circle moment when South Africa played in the knockout rounds for the first time, and I stood with my two American sons, arms around them, singing South Africa's anthem — the only national anthem that weaves multiple languages into a single, unifying song. Later in the week, I was in the stands again, cheering Spain's win over Austria, a country to which my only connections are a brief holiday…and the fact that my mother's family fled from there during the Inquisition.
The magic of the World Cup is that everyone in the stands wears the flags and shirts of countries that are “theirs” in some way. For some, it’s where they were born; for others, where they live or where their ancestors hailed from. For some, it is simply a country they have adopted for the afternoon. It is impossible to know how deep a person’s connection runs simply by looking at them. And next to a person waving one team’s colors is a stranger, family member, or close friend supporting the opposing team—or wearing the jersey of a team that isn’t playing that day at all.
What a metaphor for a pluralistic democracy.
News stories about how Americans are leaning into the uncomplicated joy of participating in this global ritual have grown over the past few weeks. Many are surprised by how hungry they are for the chance to cheer on the U.S. team and to cheer alongside a neighbor cheering for another country. To be at a watch party and feel part of something bigger, unmarred by the ever-familiar tensions of our polarized politics. It’s an unburdening we have badly needed.
The World Cup and FIFA, its organizing body, are hardly devoid of politics or of very serious problems. But for one month every four years, it manages something our civic life rarely does: it puts people who disagree in the same place to cheer together through moments of pride, joy, and defeat.
In our diverse country, classrooms are rather like the World Cup stands. Students signal their loyalties to social groups and to issues in a variety of ways. Some of those loyalties are core identities, fundamental to who they are. Others are more surface-level, akin to trying on a shirt for an afternoon to see how it fits. It is impossible for either a teacher or a fellow student to know which is which — unless they are curious enough to ask.
For our pluralistic democracy to thrive, we need rituals that stoke curiosity and help us manage the discomfort of sharing space with someone wearing another team's jersey. They will cheer for a goal that feels disastrous for your team. They will also have to endure your cheers when your team scores. The joy is communal even when the outcome is not. That asymmetry — your team's win is my team's loss, and yet, we are still here in the stands together — is exactly how we can build a better democratic life.
Our young people badly need more routine opportunities to realize that very few civic outcomes are truly permanent, including the ones that feel high-stakes and impossibly so. Classrooms are where they can practice and cultivate those skills before they enter formal civic spaces in adulthood.
The trepidation educators feel about discussing current events and contested issues is real and legitimate. So is the hunger students feel for those interactions. Like fans at World Cup games, they need spaces where genuine disagreement doesn't have to mean social rupture.
As the 2026–27 school year approaches, the question facing educators is not whether they should discuss hard things with their students. It is how they can create the conditions for honest, productive discussions that lead to enduring skills development. The World Cup, briefly and imperfectly, shows us it is possible. Classrooms, with intention and preparation, can do it even better.
Vikki Katz, Ph.D., is the Executive Director of Or Initiative and Fletcher Jones Foundation Endowed Chair in Free Speech in the School of Communication at Chapman University.
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A NASA logo is displayed at the entrance to the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters building on May 30, 2026, in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Kevin Carter/Getty Images)
America's New and Dangerous Gilded Age
Jul 11, 2026
As part of a collaboration between The Fulcrum's NextGen initiative and Made By Us, The Fulcrum is publishing Letters to America, a series created through the Youth250 project that invites Gen Z to reflect on the nation’s past, present, and future as the United States approaches its 250th anniversary.
On June 4, 1876, on the eve of our Nation’s centennial, the Transcontinental Express completed its inaugural voyage across America’s newly constructed coast-to-coast railroad, traveling from the Atlantic to the Pacific in just 83 hours. This milestone marked the end of the Railroad Race and the beginning of the Gilded Age, epitomized by its rail barons and drastic wealth disparity.
On June 12, 2026, as America approached its 250th anniversary, it gained the world’s first trillionaire. This milestone marks the latest phase in a Billionaire Space Race, the driving force behind a New Gilded Age, epitomized by “space barons” and previously unimaginable wealth.
Like the race to build transcontinental rail, the commercial space race is a rush to establish cheap infrastructure for a new frontier. Just as the railroads dramatically reduced the cost of shipping, commercial space services similarly promise to reduce the cost of putting payloads into orbit.
The commercial space race echoes its steam-powered predecessor in more than just exploration. The private space industry is likewise subject to the whims of its billionaire owners and supported by monopolistic, eye-popping, and ever-growing government contracts.
If America fails to institute common-sense regulation of this commercial space cartel, we are on track to relearn the hard lessons of the Gilded Age, with its questionable business dealings, dodgy practices, and relentless pursuit of profit.
The rail barons were empowered by government contracts and laws, effectively giving them carte blanche in the West. Their monopoly on railroad construction meant they could charge taxpayers as much as they wanted, cutting corners and inflating costs wherever they could, making the transcontinental railroad construction process ruinously dangerous, expensive, and inefficient.
After killing NASA's Space Shuttle program in 2012, the United States became dependent, overnight, on Russia for launch capabilities. Since 2020, this liability has shifted to our private sector, with SpaceX providing launch services, alongside other emerging companies like Blue Origin—and just like the railroad race, the corporate space race is administered through lucrative government contracts.
The key tenets of international space law—establishing outer space as the “domain of all mankind,” preserving it, and preventing land claims—apply to state actors, not private ones. While nations are theoretically responsible for addressing violations by private companies under their jurisdiction, a country dependent on private companies for launch services has little incentive to hold them accountable.
For-profit companies are not beholden to the international community or even to our Nation; they are responsible only to their owners, the space barons who hold monopolies on American space travel.
In the race to build a transcontinental railroad, the lack of meaningful regulation led to lengthy detours, needless worker deaths, and wasted taxpayer money. The commercial space race ups the ante exponentially. A brief glance at recent history demonstrates these risks.
On January 16, 2025, a SpaceX Starship launch exploded over the Caribbean, showering flaming wreckage and toxic chemicals over an area roughly three times the size of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, endangering life below, and putting at risk dozens of passenger airlines flying through the debris field.
The following year, on May 28, the failure of a Blue Origin rocket test resulted in the second-largest explosion in space-launch history, destroying a historic NASA launchpad and again putting lives at risk on the ground.
These tragedies, which underscore real-life dangers posed by a poorly regulated commercial space industry, are only two examples; the list goes on.
The United States space program has yet to return to its peak in the late 1960s and early 1970s. That it has taken us over half a century to get back to the Moon is simultaneously a testament to the ineffectiveness of our current model and to the benefits of the previous model, with its publicly owned infrastructure.
Contractors always have been, and always will be, a necessary component of space travel; but the only way to guarantee safety and accountability to the taxpayer is through a combination of NASA ownership/operation of launch infrastructure and better regulation of the private space industry.
There remains a place—indeed, an imperative—for private launch services, but they must play by the same rules as their public counterparts and uphold the same standards of safety, transparency, and accountability. Only in this way can our public/private space partnership avoid repeating the mistakes of the Railroad Race at our Nation’s centennial, and successfully navigate America's final frontier in our 250th year and beyond.Ira Parsons, 17, Scottsdale, AZ
Ira Parsons, 17, Scottsdale, AZ
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President Darryl Morin of Forward Latino speaks at a press conference about anti-immigration posters found around Kenosha, WI, on June 3, 2026.
Angeles Ponpa
Community leaders condemn anti-immigrant posters in Kenosha as investigation remains open
Jul 11, 2026
KENOSHA, Wis. —Community leaders, faith leaders and civil rights advocates gathered this month to condemn anti-immigrant posters that appeared across Kenosha, as police continue investigating who is responsible.
The posters, which depicted a green alien inside of a firearm target alongside the acronym “MAGA,” were first reported in early June after residents discovered them posted on telephone poles throughout the city, according to Racine County Eye. WISN 12 reported the Kenosha Police Department opened an investigation after receiving reports of the signs.
During a press conference hosted by Forward Latino, a national Latino civil rights and advocacy organization based in Wisconsin, President Darryl Morin called the posters an attempt to intimidate immigrant communities.
“This messaging, these posters, is unacceptable. It’s wrong, and it’s un-American,” Morin said. “Regardless of whom these posters are intended to target, they promote intimidation, discrimination, and violence.”
Morin said the organization has documented an increase in hate incidents across the country in recent years and encouraged anyone who experiences threats or harassment to report them to law enforcement and advocacy organizations, such as theirs.
Community member Angeles Arzate said she discovered one of the posters while driving her children to school and immediately reported it after finding additional signs throughout the city.
“To see something like this in the city of Kenosha, it’s really hurtful,” Arzate said during the press conference.
According to Spectrum News 1 Wisconsin, community organizations said similar posters have also been reported in Waukegan and North Chicago, Illinois.
According to WISN 12, Waukegan police said the same posters have been appearing there for weeks, only half an hour away.
Faith leaders joined the coalition in condemning the displays, giving their own remarks during press conference.
“These anti-immigrant posters are a symptom of a much deeper issue,” said the Rev. Wesley Isberner of Congregations United to Serve Humanity. “A rampant hatred of our immigrant and asylum-seeking neighbors has taken root in our country, including here in Kenosha, and this is dangerous.”
Residents who encounter one of the posters should report it to the Kenosha mayor’s office so city officials can document and remove it as part of the investigation, speakers said during the news conference.
As of late June, no arrests or suspects had been publicly announced. WISN 12 reported the investigation remains ongoing.
Community leaders condemn anti-immigrant posters in Kenosha as investigation remains open was first published on WI Latino News and was republished with permission.
Angeles Ponpa is the Managing Editor of Latino News Network Midwest, overseeing Illinois Latino News, Wisconsin Latino News, and Michigan Latino News. She is based in Illinois.
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