Very Rich Slavers Have Been Paying Off Trump And Congressional Conservatives For The Right To Use Slavery In The U.S. Again

In the video above, you can see our friends at Cuéntame calling out corrupt hypocrite Debbie Wasserman Schultz for her scandalous role in the prison-for-profit system. Cuéntame wanted to know why Wasserman Schultz, then head of the DNC was "siding with the Corrections Corporation of America and not her constituents in Southwest Ranches? 99% of her constituents DO NOT want a new for-profit immigrant detention center!" Although CCA "donates" their bribe money primarily to right-wing Republicans like Steve Womack (AR), Kevin McCarthy (CA), John Culberson (TX) and Marsha Blackburn (TN), Wasserman Schultz is one of the few Democrats taking payoffs from them as well. This past June, the organization In The Public Interest issued a report-- An examination of private financing for correctional and immigration detention facilities-- that examined the finances behind Trump's ramping up of the criminalization of immigration. The Department of Homeland Security had been instructed to "accelerate resource capacity." The report shows how private prison corporations CoreCivic and GEO Group are primed to provide additional immigration detention space by privately financing new facility construction, a new business frontier-- privately financing new facilities through "public-private partnerships." Providing financing to governments has become a central growth strategy as both companies became Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) in 2013, requiring them to have significant real estate holdings.  REIT status allows the corporations to avoid corporate-level taxation. GEO Group received almost $44 million in tax benefits in 2017.

While governments have traditionally used municipal bonds to finance the construction of correctional facilities, there is evidence that the two major private prison companies, CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America, or CCA) and GEO Group, are actively pushing governments to consider the use of private financing to build new facilities, and that governments are increasingly interested in the idea. This focus on building new prison and immigration detention facilities with private financing (known as “public-private partnerships”) represents a critical shift in these companies’ business model.

In the last few years, the private prison companies have given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Trump, Republicans and the Republican wing of the Democratic Partty-- the New Dems and Blue Dogs-- in exchange for their support. Last cycle, of the dozen members of the House who took the biggest bribes from the GEO Group, 7 were defeated and 4 more had their closest brushes with defeat ever and are likely to lose their seats in 2020:

• Carlos Curbelo (R-FL)- LOST
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)- no opponent/needs a primary
• Scott Tipton (R-CO)- squeaked by with 51.5%
• Mike Bishop (R-MI)- LOST
• Steve Russell (R-OK)- LOST
• Michael McCaul (R-TX)- squeaked by with 51.1%
• Steve Knight (R-CA)- LOST
• Will Hurd (R-TX)- squeaked by with 49.2%
• John Culberson (R-TX)- LOST
• Don Bacon (R-NE)- squeaked by with 51.0%
• Rod Blum (R-IA)- LOST
• Barbara Comstock (R-VA)- LOST

Russell, for example, was defeated in one of the 3 reddest districts that flipped last month-- with a PVI of R+10. One of the Democrats running against him during primary season, Tom Guild, told us at the time that "Public-private partnerships between elected officials creating 'demand' for additional detention facilities and private owners of such incarceration factories looking for a big pay day constitute old fashioned pay-for-play corruption. Steve Russell (R-OK) taking huge campaign gratuities from the private detention facilities industry earns him an honorary membership in the DC Swamp and is not a notable man bites dog storyline. Russell and Trump are two peas in a pod sharing the characteristics of avarice and greed while swimming in a putrid smelling self-dealing cesspool. It’s no wonder that Americans who currently approve of Congress' performance are limited to close friends and family members of those serving in Congress." With no help from the DCCC whatsoever, Russell's constituents gave him his walking papers on November 6.

Mike Siegel came close enough to defeating private prison ally Michael McCaul to make it near certain he will run again. Last cycle he told us that "McCaul is responsible for some of the worst atrocities of the Trump Administration. As Homeland Security Chair, he has been an architect of the Travel Ban, a proponent of the Border Wall, and a defender of Family Separation. Not only are his actions immoral, but his acceptance of campaign contributions from the private prison industry-- and his advocacy to demand full occupancy of detention centers-- is downright corrupt. I am confident that the voters of the Texas 10th will not look kindly on his actions." Siegel nearly beat him-- again, with ZERO help from the DCCC-- and is likely to win the seat in 2020.

Private prison corporations and their executives also put mammoth amounts of cash into directed PACs-- $170,000 into Trump Victory, $50,000 into another Trump front group-- Rebuilding America Now and then $50,000 each to Republican Super PACs and Dark Money committees like Win In 2016, NRSC Targeted State Victory Committee and the Florida First Project and $25,000 each to House Majority 2016, Conservative Congress Now!, NRCC, Growing A Sustainable Future, and the Florida Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee. They also ponied up big bucks for several shady groups like Kevin McCarthy's Victory Fund, various GOP building funds (over $100,000), and $10,000 each for John Culberson's PAC, Rick Scott's PAC, Henry Cuellar's PAC. Paul Ryan's PAC and, hold your nose, the DCCC. Among the biggest recipients from this pot of sewer money were some of Congress' most notoriously corrupt members:

• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog, TX)- $10,000
• John Culberson (R-TX)- $10,000
• John Carter (R-TX)- $10,000
• Scott Taylor (R-VA)- $6,000
• Ron DeSantis (R-FL)- $5,000
• Matt Gaetz (R-FL)- $5,000
• Tom Graves (R-GA)- $5,000
• winning well-connected candidate Greg Pence (R-IN)- $5,000
• Robert Aderholt (R-AL)- $3,500
• Vicente Gonzalez (Blue Dog-TX)- $2,500
• Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM)- $2,500

Yesterday, writing for the Daily Beast, Spencer Ackerman and Adam Rawnsley, emphasizing that "detention for migrants is big business-- reported that $800 Million in Taxpayer Money Went to Private Prisons Where Migrants Work for Pennies. It's a very lucrative business model. "These are dangerous times for undocumented immigrants," they wrote. "ICE has been super-charged by the Trump administration. And ICE’s empowerment has been lucrative for the companies that both cage and employ immigrants... A Daily Beast investigation found that in 2018 alone, for-profit immigration detention was a nearly $1 billion industry underwritten by taxpayers and beset by problems that include suicide, minimal oversight, and what immigration advocates say uncomfortably resembles slave labor."

Being in the U.S. illegally is a misdemeanor offense, and immigration detention is technically a civil matter, not a criminal process. But the reality looks much different. The Daily Beast reported last month that as of Oct. 20, ICE was detaining an average of 44,631 people every day, an all-time high. Now ICE has told the Daily Beast that its latest detention numbers are even higher: 44,892 people as of Dec. 8. Its budget request for the current fiscal year anticipates detaining 52,000 people daily.

Expanding the number of immigrants rounded up into jails isn’t just policy; it’s big business... [T]he private prisons giant GEO Group, expects its earnings to grow to $2.3 billion this year. Like other private prison companies, it made large donations to President Trump’s campaign and inaugural.

Pinning down the size and scope of the immigration prison industry is obscured by government secrecy. But the Daily Beast combed through ICE budget submissions and other public records to compile as comprehensive a list as possible of what for-profit prisons charge taxpayers to lock up a growing population, and how many people those facilities detain on average. The result: For 19 privately owned or operated detention centers for which the Daily Beast could find recent pricing data, ICE paid an estimated $807 million in fiscal year 2018.

Those 19 prisons hold 18,000 people-- meaning that for-profit prisons currently lock up about 41 percent of the 44,000 people detained by ICE. But that’s not a comprehensive total, and the true figures are likely significantly higher. The National Immigrant Justice Center estimated that for November 2017, roughly 71 percent of immigrant detainees, then a smaller total figure, were held in 33 privately operated jails like the Joe Corley detention center in Texas... In response to the Daily Beast’s queries, ICE said it could not provide a full breakdown of contractor-operated immigration prisons.

“Ensuring there are sufficient beds available to meet the current demand for detention space is crucial to the success of ICE’s overall mission. Accordingly, the agency is continually reviewing its detention requirements and exploring options that will afford ICE the operational flexibility needed to house the full range of detainees in the agency’s custody,” said ICE spokesperson Danielle Bennett.

But Mary Small of the Detention Watch Network says the public still lacks “incredibly basic information about immigration detention and how private prison companies are profiting from it.”

“Even though billions of taxpayer dollars are being obligated to private prison companies, the contracts between them and the federal government aren't publicly available, so we don't know how much these companies are being paid, how many people they're holding or how long their contracts last,” Small said. “This culture of secrecy-- bolstered by revolving door politics and political contributions-- have paved the way for a rapid and reckless expansion of the detention system.”

GEO Group, which owns the Corley center, is just one example. It held a daily average of 973 people in the previous fiscal year at Corley. Beyond Corley, it detained roughly 11,000 immigrants at 17 prisons. The 10 GEO Group facilities the Daily Beast could find pricing data for charged an average of about $101 per prisoner per day, compared to ICE’s overall projected $121.90 average daily rate for adult beds in fiscal year 2018. But the Government Accountability Office warned in April that ICE consistently lowballs its detention costs through dubious accounting.

While for-profit immigration detention by no means began on Trump’s watch, the Trump administration has been very good for the corporation. In November, GEO Group reported that it expects to earn $2.3 billion this year, including immigration detention revenues-- an increase of nearly 1.8 percent from the $2.26 billion it reported in 2017 and up 5.5 percent from the $2.18 billion it earned in 2016... That same year, GEO gave $281,360 to Trump’s campaign.

In 2004, GEO Group spent $120,000 on federal lobbying. By 2016, it was spending $1.2 million. Fellow private prisons giant CoreCivic spent nearly $10 million between 2008 and 2014 just to lobby the House appropriations subcommittee that controls immigration-detention funding. Together, according to the Migration Policy Institute, the two corporations dished out a combined half-million dollars to Trump’s inauguration committee.

In essence, immigration advocates say, the detention corporations pay Trump and his congressional allies, whose enthusiasm for treating immigration as a crime ensures delivery of a growing population of captives to companies that pay them far below a minimum wage.

ICE’s internal detention standards set pay for “voluntary” immigrant labor at only “at least $1.00 (USD) per day.” (“The negative impact of confinement shall be reduced through decreased idleness, improved morale and fewer disciplinary incidents,” ICE contends, even though immigration detention is supposed to be administrative, not punitive.)

Lawsuits over the past few years present an alarming accumulation of accounts that labor within the private prisons is less “voluntary” than the corporations insist. A class-action lawsuit against GEO Group, initially by nine detainees in Colorado, claims that tens of thousands of immigrants have been forced to work for their $1 daily wage. A different lawsuit against a GEO Group facility in California claims “systematic and unlawful wage theft, unjust enrichment, and forced labor,” including a scheme in which the corporation requires work to “buy the basic necessities-- including food, water, and hygiene products-- that GEO refuses to provide for them.” Washington State sued GEO Group in 2017 for paying its detainees $1 a day-- or sometimes in what the complaint calls “snack food”-- rather than the $11/hour state minimum wage. GEO Group has vigorously contested the suits, though not always successfully.

“To the extent that the industry is in the business of expanding the system so they can make more money off holding more immigrants that can be confined, and doing everything possible to profit off of it by labor processes like getting detainees to work and paying them a dollar a day, there is very little distinction you can draw between slave labor and what they’re doing,” said Emily Ryo, an associate professor at the University of California’s Gould School of Law.

   The differences between for-profit immigration prisons and public immigration prisons are substantial, according to recent research by Ryo and colleagues based on data from fiscal year 2015. Even though for-profit companies operate only an estimated 10 percent of ICE detention facilities, both Ryo and the National Immigrant Justice Center found that more than two-thirds of all detainees have been held at least once at a privately run prison. Those for-profit prisons “consistently and substantially” hold immigrants longer than public ones—about 87 days on average for people ultimately granted relief, versus 33.3 days in public prisons.

Fifteen of the 179 detainees who died in ICE custody between October 2003 and February 2018 were held at a single private immigration detention center, run by CoreCivic in Arizona, according to the Migration Policy Institute. At another privately run immigration detention jail, GEO Group’s Adelanto ICE Processing Center in California, there have been seven suicide attempts between December 2016 and October 2017, and at least one success. A September DHS inspector general’s report showed photographs of bedsheets hanging as improvised nooses inside Adelanto cells. A detainee told inspectors, “I’ve seen a few attempted suicides using braided sheets by the vents and then the guards laugh at them and call them ‘suicide failures’ once they are back from medical.” Another detainee death classified as a suicide occurred at CoreCivic’s Stewart Detention Facility in July 2018, also using a bedsheet noose.

And ICE turns what its own watchdog warns is a blind eye to detention conditions. It even contracts out substantial amounts of oversight over its detention centers. A June report by the DHS inspector general found that the inspections contractor, Nakamoto, uses practices that “are not consistently thorough,” and its inspections don’t “fully examine actual conditions or identify all compliance deficiencies.” While ICE’s additional in-house inspectors are more thorough-- they found 475 deficiencies at the same 29 detention sites where Nakamoto found only 209-- the inspector general found those inspections “too infrequent to ensure the facilities implement all corrections.” The result, the inspector general says, is that ICE doesn’t “ensure adequate oversight or systemic improvements in detention conditions.”

GEO and CoreCivic looked carefully at non-incumbents to support in 2018. They screened candidates carefully, looking for the most corrupt and most likely to look the other way even though their business model is based on slavery. And which non-incumbents-- who won their races-- did they find who met their draconian criteria? GEO:

• Rick Scott (R-FL)
• Josh Hawley (R-MO)
• Greg Pence (R-IN)
• Ross Spano (R-FL)
• Dwight Evans (D-PA)

And here's the list of the top non-incumbent recipients of CoreCivic bribes for the cycle-- only the candidates who won their races:

• Mitt Romney (R-UT)
• Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)
• Greg Pence (R-IN)
• Mike Braun (R-IN)
• Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-IN)
• Josh Hawley (R-MO)

Don't get the idea that they only gave to corrupt Republicans. The biggest recipients of their sewer money among Democrats were conservatives Henry Cuellar (TX) and Claire McCaskill (MO). GEO gave significant money to 3 crooked conservative Democrats: Henry Cuellar (TX), Vicente Gonzalez (TX) and Ben Ray Lujan (NM). I hope you've noted that Mike Pence's bro-- just elected to Congress in Indiana-- takes a lot of money from every pot that comes from the slavery lobby. But slavery was ok in the Buy-Bull the Pences worship, wasn't it?

Greg and Mike-- good with slavery... as long as they get their cut

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

I thought Republicans were all for the death penalty for things like kidnapping. As of this writing, hundreds of children are still "separated from their parent." How's that for a euphemism for kidnapping? Court-ordered deadlines have come and court-orderd deadlines have gone. Our burgeoning totalitarian government has even stated that they simply will not be returning at least 600 children. This has become a twisted and very Trumpian (read Republican) example of that old possession is 9/10ths of the law thing.

Since the beginning of Trump's "Steal The Children Initiative," I have wondered about the profit-making aspects of his endeavor. Republicans have long supported privatizing prisons for profit. One need only look at Arizona Governor Jan Brewer's infamous prison privatization scam. Let's face it, privatized prisons need occupants in order turn a profit, and the various crises south of the border amount to a perfect storm for profiteering. If you don't believe or care that that's driving current immigration law you're probably naive, hateful, and/or dumb enough to be a Trump supporter. It's the same deal as, say, hiring your friends to restore power to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. How'd that work out? Say heckuvajob three times.

Over the next many months and years, we will, if there is still any manner of press freedom left, be hearing about all sorts of Trumpist profiteering off of the traumatization of children, not to mention the future dark manifestations of the anger of those children. They weren't MS-13 coming in but some of them might be soon, thanks to the reverse genius of Señor Trumpanzee. Not to worry, Trump and his kind will find a way to make a profit from that, too. "Only I can fix it!"

Christian organizations can be a slightly different animal but they can also be every bit as suspect. Over recent years, the DeVos family has given over $1,000,000 in grants to Bethany Christian Services. To be fair, Bethany Christian Services is actually registered as a non-profit, but, $700 a night will get you a great hotel room here in New York City, so, really? $700 per night? What other "charges" are there? Maybe $20 for a baloney sandwich? Slice of process cheese $5.00 extra? That and the fact that there is a connection to DeVos and Trump gives the whole thing a really foul smell. You are who you hang out with. Lay down with dogs...It doesn't help that the Christianity that Bethany espouses is of the conservative, homophobic nutjob variety, ie. the kind that republicans embrace and the kind that is rife with profiteering mega-church pastors who flaunt their wealth with things like private planes and absurdly large mansions, all in the name of Jesus, of course. Also, how Christian is it to offer children for adoption when they already have parents? Hence the terms 'kidnapping' and 'trafficking'.

So, maybe Betsy DeVos is or is not directly profiting personally here, but, it's only natural, given what we do know about DeVos and the kind of characters in Trump's orbit that we assume cash is being somehow pocketed in places where it doesn't belong. Given all that, we can't help but think that Trump, his grifter Beavis and Butthead family members, and any number of other key republicans from Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan on down will be reaping personal profits, and not just electoral support, from things like cages, locks, and diapers. It's a safe guess that even some of the security guards who keep any politicians or members of the press from finding missing babies are involved in a lot of for fun and profit scams, and worse, related to this horror. Keep in mind that it is DeVos's brother who founded Blackwater, so it wouldn't be much of a stretch to think that his sister's brain works in similar conniving, profiteering ways of profiting from human misery and cruelty. Family Values, Republican style. In the end, portions of our tax dollars are going to always end up not really helping children but going to accounts on offshore islands. It is the way of grifters. Someone needs to follow the money, and then (ha-ha) actually do something about it.

Trump's Zero Tolerance Incarcerations-- Follow The Money

Ben Ray Lujan (right), Pelosi's DCCC chairman, takes blood money from the crooks building private immigrant detention facilities for Trump. Why won't he return the cash?

This week the organization In The Public Interest issued a report-- An examination of private financing for correctional and immigration detention facilities-- that examines the finances behind Trump's ramping up of the criminalization of immigration. The Department of Homeland Security has been instructed to "accelerate resource capacity." The report shows how private prison corporations CoreCivic and GEO Group are primed to provide additional immigration detention space by privately financing new facility construction, a new business frontier-- privately financing new facilities through "public-private partnerships." Providing financing to governments has become a central growth strategy as both companies became Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) in 2013, requiring them to have significant real estate holdings.  REIT status allows the corporations to avoid corporate-level taxation. GEO Group received almost $44 million in tax benefits in 2017.

While governments have traditionally used municipal bonds to finance the construction of correctional facilities, there is evidence that the two major private prison companies, CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America, or CCA) and GEO Group, are actively pushing governments to consider the use of private financing to build new facilities, and that governments are increasingly interested in the idea. This focus on building new prison and immigration detention facilities with private financing (known as “public-private partnerships”) represents a critical shift in these companies’ business model.

Friday, In These Times published an essay by David Dayen, These Private Prison Companies Are Already Profiting Off of Trump’s Order on Family Separation. "[T]he Trump administration," he wrote, "still has the goal, expressed in the order, of detaining families together indefinitely, until their immigration cases are complete. That goal is contingent on convincing a federal judge to rip up the Flores settlement, a 1997 agreement that says migrant children can only be kept up to 20 days in non-secure, licensed facilities. On June 21, Trump’s Department of Justice asked a judge to change the rules, but the Obama administration asked for the same changes in 2016 and was rebuked."

In the last few years, the private prison companies have given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Trump, Republicans and Blue Dogs in exchange for their support.

Last cycle the dozen members of the House who took the biggest bribes from the GEO Group were:

• Carlos Curbelo (R-FL)- $10,000
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)- $9,690
• Scott Tipton (R-CO)- $7,500
• Mike Bishop (R-MI)- $6,000
• Steve Russell (R-OK)- $5,000
• Michael McCaul (R-TX)- $5,000
• Steve Knight (R-CA)- $5,000
• Will Hurd (R-TX)- $5,000
• John Culberson (R-TX)- $5,000
• Don Bacon (R-NE)- $5,000
• Rod Blum (R-IA)
• Barbara Comstock (R-VA)

Tom Guild, the progressive Democrat whose Oklahoma primary is Tuesday noted that his far right Republican opponent, Steve Russell, is one of Congress' biggest supporters of the for-profit prison industry-- and, in return, the industry has funded his political career in a big way. "Public-private partnerships," Tom told us yesterday,"between elected officials creating 'demand' for additional detention facilities and private owners of such incarceration factories looking for a big pay day constitute old fashioned pay-for-play corruption. Steve Russell (R-OK) taking huge campaign gratuities from the private detention facilities industry earns him an honorary membership in the DC Swamp and is not a notable man bites dog storyline. Russell and Trump are two peas in a pod sharing the characteristics of avarice and greed while swimming in a putrid smelling self-dealing cesspool. It’s no wonder that Americans who currently approve of Congress' performance are limited to close friends and family members of those serving in Congress. Hopefully, the good folks in Oklahoma’s fifth congressional district will give Steve his walking papers soon. Then, he can go out into the 'real world' and earn an honest living for a change while chafing under the laws he created."

They also put mammoth amounts of cash into directed PACs-- $170,000 into Trump Victory, $50,000 into another Trump front group-- Rebuilding America Now and then $50,000 each to Republican Super PACs and Dark Money committees like Win In 2016, NRSC Targeted State Victory Committee and the Florida First Project and $25,000 each to House Majority 2016, Conservative Congress Now!, NRCC, Growing A Sustainable Future, and the Florida Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee.

So far this cycle they've ponied up big bucks for several shady groups like Kevin McCarthy's Victory Fund ($45,000), various GOP building funds (over $100,000), and $10,000 each for John Culberson's PAC, Rick Scott's PAC, Henry Cuellar's PAC Paul Ryan's PAC and, hold your nose, the DCCC. And this year's dozen biggest GEO Group bribe-takers so far:

• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog, TX)- $10,000
• John Culberson (R-TX)- $10,000
• John Carter (R-TX)- $10,000
• Scott Taylor (R-VA)- $6,000
• Ron DeSantis (R-FL)- $5,000
• Matt Gaetz (R-FL)- $5,000
• Tom Graves (R-GA)- $5,000
• David Pence (R-IN)- $5,000
• John Katko (R-NY)- $5,000 (returned)
• Robert Aderholt (R-AL)- $3,500
• Vicente Gonzalez (Blue Dog-TX)- $2,500
• Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM)- $2,500

The other big private prison spender in Congress is CoreCivic. So who were the big bribe takers from these crooks? Last cycle's dozen worst-- you know with some of these congress crooks, a pattern emerges:

• John Culberson (R-TX)- $11,500
• Chuck Fleischmann (R-TN)- $11,200
• Diane Black (R-TN)-$11,000
• Will Hurd (R-TX)-$7,500
• Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)- $5,000
• John Carter (R-TX)- $5,000
• Paul Ryan (R-WI)- $5,000
• Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ)- $5,000
• Ander Crenshaw (R-FL)- $5,000
• Tim Ryan (D-OH)- $4,500
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)- $4,000
• Gregg Harper (R-MS)- $4,000

And so far this cycle... you can recognize some of the names that are constantly getting blood money from the private prison industry... repulsive characters like John Culberson of Texas for example-- always standing up and fighting for the private prison industry. Here are the 5 worst House members so far in 2018

• Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)- $19,100
• John Culberson (R-TX)- $11,000
• John Rose (R-TN)- $7,700
• Chuck Fleischmann (R-TN)- $5,500
• Greg Pence (R-IN)- $3,500

Mike Siegel, the progressive Democrat running for the very gerrymandered Texas seat that Trump enabler Michael McCaul occupies mentioned to my yesterday that "McCaul is responsible for some of the worst atrocities of the Trump Administration. As Homeland Security Chair, he has been an architect of the Travel Ban, a proponent of the Border Wall, and a defender of Family Separation. Not only are his actions immoral, but his acceptance of campaign contributions from the private prison industry-- and his advocacy to demand full occupancy of detention centers-- is downright corrupt. I am confident that the voters of the Texas 10th will not look kindly on his actions."

Private Prisons Want Trump's Zero Tolerance Agenda-- Can You Guess Why?

What a video! MJ Hegar is running for the Texas congressional seat that covers Williamson and Bell counties, TX-31, between Waco and Austin. It runs from Killeen in the north and Round Rock in the south. The PVI is a daunting R+10. Romney won it 59.6% to 38.3% and Trump won it 53.5% to 40.8%. Bell County includes part of Fort Hood, the largest American military base in the world. It's a traditionally Democratic district but Carter, can ultra-conservative Republican, has been in office since 2002. He never deviates from a hardline GOP approach. For example, on Thursday he voted for the extreme anti-immigration bill and for the far right Agriculture bill.

Carter is a backbencher you rarely hear about outside of his own district. He doesn't do anything except for for extreme right-wing proposals. His Trump adhesion score is 98.8%, the second highest in Congress after whip Steve Scalise. He's a member of the Tea Party Caucus. He's also a bit of a crook

On Thursday the Dallas Morning News revealed that Carter, along with John Culberson (R-TX) and Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX) have taken massive bribes from GEO and it's executives, the private prison company that stands to gain the most from Trump's "zero tolerance" policy that locks up huge numbers of border crossers and their children. GEO operates the private immigration detention facilities in Karnes City, Laredo, Pearsall and Conroe.

Culberson is facing a tough re-election race against Democrat Lizzie Fletcher. The race has been rated a ‘toss up’ by nonpartisan analyst Cook Political Report.

Culberson received the most funding from GEO out of Texas members of Congress, but GEO is also the top donor this cycle for U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, who received $32,400, and Round Rock Republican Rep. John Carter, who received $31,600.

Both Culberson and Cuellar serve on the House Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee, which funds private immigration detention centers. Culberson is also the chairman of and Carter serves on the House Appropriations subcommittee on commerce, justice and science, which oversees funding for private prisons.

Cuellar’s campaign manager Colin Strother said that GEO is one of the largest employers in Cuellar’s district, and that Cuellar has not allowed campaign contributions to influence his decisions.

“If you live in a district in the state of Washington, you get boating money. If you live in a district in Nebraska, you get agriculture money. We have a district with lots of jail facilities that employ lots of people,” Strother said.

Culberson’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Henry Cuéllar and Vicente Gonzalez were 2 of the 3 Democrats-- the other was another Blue Dog, Fireman Vela-- who refused to sign a bipartisan discharge petition to allow a DACA debate, killing it. Now we know why.

Another one of the largest groups that runs private immigration detention centers in the United States is CoreCivic. The company runs facilities in Houston, Laredo, Dilley and Taylor.

CoreCivic PACs have given less money to candidates than GEO, but still contributed to three Texans, according to OpenSecrets.org: Culberson with $11,000, McCaul with $3,500 and Cuellar with $1,500.

Thursday, the Houston Chronicle reported on the fate of the more than 2,400 children who are under 12 years old that the Trump regime separated from their parents and locked up in Texas.

“It’s chaos,” said Michelle Brané, director of migrant rights at the Women’s Refugee Commission, a national advocacy group. “Everything is just moving really fast … I am not convinced they have a plan for reunifying those they have separated.”

...Under Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy, parents usually served just a few days of prison time for illegally crossing the border before going to immigration detention centers run by the Department of Homeland Security. From there, they can be quickly deported without their children. In one case, a Guatemalan father was deported and had no idea where his 18-month-old toddler was for five months until they were reunited in December.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement has said it is not routinely informed about how or when parents and children were separated and where the adults may be.

“You’re talking about 2,000-plus children scattered across America,” said U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Houston Democrat. “What a difficult challenge and our fear is that we lose one child.”

The sudden influx of so many very young children has overwhelmed the federal government, which has put out emergency calls for contractors across the nation to provide more bed space and recruit more foster parents. It has meant some children are not put in a foster home with a family, as has generally been the goal for “tender age” kids, but instead may stay for weeks and even months in a residential shelter intended for older children. Most child advocates believe this is not in the best interests of the children.

“Kids, particularly young kids, should be in a smaller, more community-based setting, as opposed to the larger scale institutional-like settings,” said Kathryn Kuennen, associate director of children's services with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which cares for unaccompanied minors.

I haven't talked to a Democratic congressional candidate who isn't concerned about this. Yesterday Randy Bryce, for one, was majorly pissed off. This is what he told his own supporters:

Yesterday, Melania Trump boarded a plane to visit the US-Mexico border, where over 2300 children have been separated from their parents, wearing a jacket that read on the back, "I really don't care. Do u?"

Yeah Melania, I really freaking care.

I care about everyday Americans. I care about hardworking families in Wisconsin and at the border. And millions of Americans, all across the country, stood up and showed that they care too.

But that isn't enough. While Trump may have signed an executive order, if you read the fine print, it doesn't solve the problem. All this order does is turn family separation into family incarceration. And to make matters worse, Donald Trump is still refusing to reunite the children the US has already separated from their parents under his watch.

We have to keep the pressure up because we have to make sure these families are released and reunited immediately. To do that, we need to demand an end to Trump's zero tolerance immigration policy.

Call your representatives now and demand they support an end to Trump's zero tolerance immigration policy. Dial (202) 224-3121 to reach the Capitol Switchboard and speak with your representative.

...We have to keep up the fight, because when we fight, we win.