Fighting Dhs Immigration Raids

Floor Speech

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Ms. ANSARI. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congresswoman Ramirez for her leadership.

Mr. Speaker, the Trump regime's mass deportation agenda is not about public safety. It is part of a much bigger story of corruption, cruelty, and abuse of power that defines Trump's America.

Earlier this year, Congress authorized a massive slush fund under Trump's so-called big, beautiful bill, pouring more than $170 billion of taxpayer money into enforcement and detention center expansion without any sort of meaningful oversight.

At the heart of this system sits a vast network of privatized detention facilities run by private prison corporations, like CoreCivic and GEO Group, whose bottom lines depend on filling these beds. These companies are awarded government contracts worth billions of dollars, yet their facilities are notorious for cutting corners on healthcare, food, and safety in order to maximize shareholder profits.

I have seen this firsthand at the Eloy Detention Center in Arizona run by CoreCivic. I have talked to dozens of women who have been detained there. They shared with me their testimonies about lack of clean drinking water, lack of air conditioning during Arizona's extreme heat, racist inhumane treatment, and of course my constituent Yari, who was a green card holder who has leukemia, has been detained there and refused access to an oncologist for 6 months until direct outreach from our office and the community's input as well.

This is all, again, all about shareholder profit. CoreCivic, for example, had a revenue of $530 million during the second quarter of this year alone, an almost 10 percent increase from 2024.

Meanwhile, GEO Group's chairman said: Republicans' new slush fund for ICE would provide ``unprecedented growth opportunities.''

CoreCivic's CEO Damon Hininger stated in shareholder calls that this is a ``pivotal moment,'' and that ``business is perfectly aligned with demands of this moment.'' That is disgusting.

Donald Trump's cruelty against immigrants has transformed human misery into both a political spectacle and a business model. The more people that are detained, the more money private corporations make, and the more campaign contributions and political power flow directly back to Donald Trump and those who fund this system.

This is Trump's corruption machine turning our immigration system into a pay-to-play racket for his donors. Meanwhile, families across the country are paying the price, and parents are torn from their children, leaving households and communities economically devastated. Taxpayers in this country are footing the bill for a system not designed to keep us safe, but to funnel money into the pockets of a powerful few.

It does not have to be this way. We can invest in alternatives to detention centers that are proven to be more humane and effective. We can end blank checks for ICE and stop the privatization of immigration detention centers once and for all, and we can finally reject the lie that Trumpian cruelty is security because in America, our safety should never come second to a billion dollar corporation's profit.

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