The Daily Beast’s Betsy Woodruff reports that Daniel Ragsdale, second-in-command at ICE, is soon expected to join the GEO Group, a Florida-based private prison company that “has lucrative contracts with ICE to run immigrant detention centers.” But “Drain the swamp,” right?
“While you may be losing me as a colleague, please know that I will continue to be a strong advocate for you and your mission,” Ragsdale wrote in an email to his ICE colleagues on April 28, obtained by The Daily Beast.
That email said his last day at the agency will be May 27, and didn’t say what his new job would be. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed to The Daily Beast that Ragsdale is leaving the agency for the private sector, but didn’t comment on his new job.
“Dan is a person of great honor and a strong ethical code,” said a source close to Ragsdale. “I have no doubt he will bring great deal of integrity to the process to make sure organizations like GEO are complying with the rules and regulations regarding folks who are in detention because of their immigration status.”
Yeah, about that. Here’s Woodruff earlier this year on a class-action lawsuit that GEO is facing for forced labor:
A federal judge ruled that current and former detainees held at an immigrant detention center in Colorado can join a class-action lawsuit against GEO Group, a private prison company. The plaintiffs allege that the GEO Group forced detainees to work for extremely low wages or for no wages at all, and in some cases threatened detainees with solitary confinement as punishment if they refused to work. The center holds undocumented immigrants facing deportation.
“This is the first lawsuit of its kind in the history of the United States,” said Andrew Free, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys. “This is the first time that a private prison company has ever been accused of forced labor, and this is the first time that a judge has ever found that the claims can go forward under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and the bans in federal law on forced labor.”
For both ICE and the private prison industry, it’s always been clear what the driving force is: massive profits, and at the expense of brown and black bodies:
On a shareholder conference call last week, the company’s top executives said ICE’s move to increase detention and deportation in response to President Donald Trump’s executive orders will be good for their business.
Ragsdale isn’t the first high-profile ICE official the prison company has hired. One GEO executive on the shareholder call, David Venturella, is also a former ICE official, as is Mary Loiselle, another GEO Group executive.
This kind of turnover, from federal agencies to private companies that contract with them, is common throughout the federal government. It also draws significant criticism from good-governance advocates, who say this “revolving door” encourages government officials to develop cozy relationships with corporate leaders so they can get lucrative gigs there after finishing their time in government.
As Trump pushes for dramatically expanded immigration enforcement, with more detentions and deportations, ICE is increasingly reliant on private prison companies––including GEO––to house the people it detains.
“GEO’s stock price jumped dramatically after Election Day,” notes Woodruff, “likely due to investors’ belief that the Trump administration would be good for the private prison industry.” And as we’ve seen in the ramping up of his deportation force and ongoing attempts to repeal Obamacare, what’s good for Trump is never good for the most vulnerable among us.