The Mass Detention Industrial Complex
During the Cold War, the United States spent trillions of dollars on the Military Industrial Complex to protect its citizens from the “Godless” and communist Soviet Union and its nuclear arsenal. The Military Industrial Complex provided employment opportunities for scientists and billions of dollars for weapons manufacturers. During the 1980s and 1990s, Republicans and Democrats spent billions to fight crime that led to mass incarceration, creating the Prison Industrial Complex. It bankrolled law enforcement, prisons, and all the money-making opportunities—from uniforms and meals to cheap prison labor–that came with them in predominantly white towns.
In both cases, politicians convinced Americans to fear the Russians and young Black and Latino men alike, rather than investing in institutions that might aid in preventing crime and improving society, such as universal healthcare and public transportation.
In July, Congress allocated $175 billion to ramp up “immigration enforcement” in Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will receive $75 billion to hire 10,000 additional agents and another $45 billion to build new detention centers. These measures will dramatically expand the Mass Deportation Industrial Complex. Like the military and prison industrial complexes that preceded it, this multibillion dollar industry is rooted in fear, racism, and racial capitalism.
Fear is a major component in American racial politics. Historically, many white politicians have tried to scare white voters, stoking fear of nonwhite people. It is a central feature of Trumpism.
Take the case of Laken Riley. In February 22, 2024, Jose Antonio Ibarra, an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela, murdered Riley, an Augusta University nursing student who was jogging on the University of Georgia campus. This murder—like any murder—is a tragedy. But more American citizens murder other Americans each year. Yet in a moment of xenophobic anti-immigration politics and right-wing media distortions, facts did not matter. In reality, US-born citizens commit more crime than immigrants, by a significant margin.
During Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign he promised Americans he was going to deport undocumented immigrant criminals. He referred to them as “rapists”, “criminals,” and “thieves” who were “poisoning the blood” of America. When Trump talks about “undocumented immigrants,” he means Latinos—because most Americans take this term to mean Spanish-speaking men with tattoos standing in a Home Depot parking lot, and not, any of the 440,000 European immigrants who have overstayed their visa or committed crimes while in the US.
Despite the Trump’s administration’s commitment to denying the existence of institutional racism, the mass detention industrial complex is racist. Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar,” has said ICE agents can detain an individual based on their “physical appearance.”
In other words, if an ICE agent encounters an undocumented Irish person standing next to a non-white Spanish-speaking person, they will detain the non-white or Latino Spanish-speaking person. After 9/11, many Americans used racial profiling to justify viewing Muslim Americans as terrorists. The practice remains the cornerstone of Trump’s deportation scheme.
In 1981, Republican Strategist Lee Atwater said it best: during the 1950s, a white southern politician could say “Nigger, Nigger, Nigger.” In later decades, he explained, “you have to get abstract.” You mention, say, “busing” or “welfare” instead. This is known as “dog whistle politics.”
Dog whistle politics is a white politician not making direct references to race to promote a policy. Instead, they use racial stereotypes—such as “welfare queen,” “terrorist,” or “illegal”—to develop a racist policy. During the 1980s and 90s, “crime” was a dog whistle term that implied young Black men. Today, “mass detention” and “deportation” are dog whistle code words for non-white undocumented immigrants.
The Mass Detention/Deportation Industrial Complex is also about money. “Racial capitalism” is a concept that highlights how capitalism disproportionately exploits Black labor and bodies. Its foundation is race-based slavery. Historically, African Americans have had lower incomes and accumulated far less wealth than white Americans. The Prison and Mass Detention/Deportation Industrial complexes rely on Black and brown bodies to redirect economic benefits to white people. White-owned private prisons, correctional officers, law enforcement, and food contracts are just a few of the jobs that have emerged from the Prison Industrial Complex.
The Mass Detention/Deportation Industrial Complex will put public funds in the pockets of people who build and run detention centers. For example, CDR Maguire and CDR Health are two of the nine companies who received contracts to build “Alligator Alcatraz.” The companies CEOs, Carlos and Tina Vidal-Duart, gave a combined $1.9 million to the electoral campaigns of Republican Governor Ron DeSantis. But they are not the only ones to benefit financially. Alligator Alcatraz has even become a merchandising bonanza: Amazon hosts entreprenreurs who sell shirts, hats, coins, flags, and coffee mugs to celebrate the president’s pet project.
Meanwhile, the private prison industry has made record profits this last quarter. For example, Core Civic made $539 million dollars–a 10% increase from last year. The tech surveillance firm Palantir saw a 53% increase in government contracts. The Department of Defense is its largest customer.
Meanwhile, ICE is recruiting agents with a $50,000 hiring bonus and other perks. One of their most famous recruits is the former actor Dean Cain (who played Superman—as well as the racist white college student who got into a fight with Dwayne Wayne [Kadeem Hardison] and Ron Johnson [Daryl Bell] in A Different World). Although the government sent his Japanese-American grandparents to an internment camp during the Second World War, Cain has enthusiastically announced his interest in joining ICE and pledged not to wear a mask—unlike most of his future colleagues, who prefer to do their work anonymously.
Most of the detention center jobs will go to white people. They are attractive because they pay higher wages than most unskilled occupations. Also, there will be private-owned detention centers who will avoid regulations, provide subhuman standards, and be overcrowded. All the contracts to build detention centers will almost certainly go to white-owned companies; of course there is no law that requires a percentage of the contracts to go to non-white businesses.
Yogi Berra, the late great NY Yankee catcher, coined the phrase, “It’s Déjà vu All Over Again.” The Mass Detention/Deportation Industrial Complex is another manifestation of what Naomi Klen calls “disaster capitalism.” And like the military and prison industrial complexes, the disproportionate winners will be white—and the losers will be Black and Latino.
