Stephen Miller, the key figure behind the current mass deportation policies is the descendant of immigrants. So is his boss, the president. But their powerful actions to deliver the largest mass deportation program in history against immigrants reflects a commitment to the belief that this program is necessary because of an “invasion” of migrants of color who will steal and destroy the American (white) way of life. Cultural, religious, linguistic diversity is seen as the problem rather than a boost to a thriving democracy.
It is a chilling perspective, the idea of mass deportation as a tool for fighting off the “great replacement” of white citizens by people of color. It’s really that simple. That underlying Trump’s mass deportation program is a “chain of ideas” as argued by Professor Kendi,** that sees vulnerable whites in an ongoing battle to protect themselves from cross-border invaders from countries where white people are not in the majority.
Today I write in frustration and heartache over the ongoing reports of Mr. Trump’s campaign to go after immigrants of color. And although the winds of change are blowing, they’re not promising an end to the ways in which ICE is seen as engaging in lawful actions to protect its “legitimate” citizens against illegal border crossers.
I’m especially frustrated when I read of yet another death of an innocent person in the custody of ICE or of the private prison detention center that held them on behalf of the federal government.
The latest, a man from Peru who’d been here for 17 years after his arrest applied for permission to self-deport. His appeal was denied. Instead, after being picked up in Maryland as part of an ICE targeted roundup he was transferred far from home to a detention center in New Orleans. Two weeks later following signs of medical distress he was taken to a hospital. And there he died.
The sheer practice of typical ICE arrests are viewed as aggressive, sometimes cruel and usually unnecessary. The people behind the heavily militarized uniform are not police. In a normal town or municipality, a police officer is someone whose role is to protect residents and to serve the public. But today’s “immigration cops” behave more like rogue thugs who have and will likely again use deadly violence against anyone, citizen or not, who stands in the way of fulfilling Mr. Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
The ICE activities of today resemble the campaign of terror unleashed by Hitler’s brown shirts against Jews in the 1930s.
This system of militarized violence against innocent noncitizen people is allowed to exist and hurt thousands of people every single day, because regular, caring people in this country seem to be in total denial over how bad things are in this country, and how the continued activities by ICE not only threaten democracy, but also invite us to become comfortable with authoritarianism. Citizen protestors are seen as the problem rather than people having the courage to demand respect for the constitution and accountability by the government and its agents to the rule of law. I truly think democracy as a living concept in this country is barely on life support. Our government representatives are supposed to protect and serve the people of this country. Instead, power and profit rule the day. And those who do have the power to demand true order and accountability might as well be in a moral coma.
Profit is more important than questions about the how and why ICE is allowed to use blatant racial profiling to arrest innocent people and treat them like criminals. And why and how once ICE agents arrest those innocent people with handcuffs, they are delivered to immigration jails for Mr. Trump. Immigration jails that are the property of hugely profitable mega corporations selling shares on the New York Stock Exchange.
The companies that operate today’s detention jails boast of having $500+ millions in federal contracts. Because they are prison companies, detainees are held and treated as such. Handcuffed, wearing prison garb, personal items removed. But is there a true “charge” of suspected crime? No. For he or she is presumed “illegal”, therefore guilty of being a noncitizen who is not entitled to a lawyer, isn’t given the right to speak to family, isn’t allowed to comfort the traumatized family left behind. Even worse, if they entered detention with a serious medical condition and in need of daily medicines, they aren’t guaranteed to get what they need. If a person can’t produce the $10,000 for a bond they sit and they wait for the expedited removal proceeding that precedes deportation. And sometimes the waiting, especially if someone was arrested without access to medical care, along with indifference to the quality of detention and to human life leads to deaths in custody. Which is how to date there are at least 30 known deaths linked to ICE arrests and custody just in 2026.
Yet some people are profiting greatly from this mass deportation program.
Geo Group and Core Civic are currently generating millions of dollars off Trump’s campaign to harass, detain, arrest and place in life threatening conditions innocent immigrant detainees.
The Brennan Center for Justice reports that GeoGroup has already earned $638.2 million in profits in the second quarter for 2026. In Mr. Trump’s first year they earned a record $254 million in net income. Which means great dividends for their investors.
Similarly and in the same reports, Core Civic boasts that most of its earnings (over 53%) are generated by contracts with the federal government. In 2025 alone its overall revenue rose to $2.2 billion and its net income in 2025 spiked by 70% to $116.5 million. All thanks to the launching of the largest mass deportation program in history.
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump’s system of inhumanity is supported by individuals who either don’t know, don’t care or who really do relish and enjoy the daily enactment of this cruelty. This is a system that will be extremely difficult to dismantle, given the billions already committed to a process that is constitutionally unconscionable and that is resting on a belief that the lives of these people, of their loved ones, friends, neighbors, really don’t matter.
There is something grossly wrong with the current detention of over 60,000 people who have been in this country as innocent workers, mothers, fathers, and neighbors and of their treatment at the hands of these for-profit corporations as if they have no right to respect for their human dignity. Does not being a citizen who did everything right and showed up to a scheduled immigration hearing justify being arrested and subjected to an expedited removal process without a right to legal counsel? Does being a noncitizen in detention justify placement in a privately owned immigration jail that threatens a person’s life for lack of essential medical care?
Today I join the mourning of those nearly 30 people who have been reported in 2026 alone as an unnecessary and cruel death that resulted from ICE arrests, and delivery into the hands of one of the profiteering corporations that operate immigration jails for Trump’s racist mass deportation program.
“There is no fire greater than greed and hatred.” (J. Kornfield, Buddha’s Little Instruction Book) (1994).
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**Ibram X Kendi, Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age (2026)