Thread by @MigrantFreedom

#THREAD

Today, @MigrantFreedom launched the #Freedom100 Fund — an impact investment opportunity designed to reunite families separated by the U.S. immigration detention system by posting bond for 100 immigrants.

So let’s talk about the racist history of bonds shall we:

The history of immigration bonds in the US goes back to the late 1700s. Prior to federal immigration law, local & state laws were powerful regulators of the movement of people with criminal records, the poor, & the regulation of slavery/other policies of racial subordination.

For ex: the 1794 Massachusetts poor laws – a legacy of the English poor law system – imposed a penalty on any person who knowingly brought an indigent person into the Commonwealth and left them there.

Later, in 1820, the state demanded security from masters of vessels when their passengers seemed likely to become a public charge. The statute required a bond to prevent against potential expenses arising from any passenger within three years.

When bonds are used punitively they are referred to as “surety bonds” or instruments of debt. When bonds are used to generate wealth for private gain they are called “investments.”

Sound familiar?

Private prisons are built and expanded through bonds, like in the case of the Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia. In 2007, $55 million in tax-exempt municipal bonds were issued to a private prison corporation, Municipal Corrections.

The bonds were to be paid off by revenue from a contract the facility already had with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

But due to a downturn in the business of incarceration, the private prison corporation began defaulting on its bond payments to the county of Ocilla, Georgia.

What had been promoted as a cash cow for the community became a huge tax payer liability in the amount of $1.6 million in back taxes owed to the county and city of Ocilla.

🚨 Immigration bonds are used punitively, as ransom, to make sure private prisons are full of immigrants 🚨

Every person is given a monetary worth, which is the price set for their freedom.

Meanwhile, these corporations pay NO income tax and offer NO public benefit, other than menial and trauma-inducing employment.

Private prison companies like the GEO Group are classified by the IRS as Real Estate Investment Trusts (REIT).

REIT’s are companies that generate income - like apartments, malls, and now – prisons. They pay NO corporate income tax, while paying their shareholders 90% of profit

Disguising oppression in the business of real estate is rooted in the history of SLAVERY and RACISM in the US.

Southern slaveholders wanted to generate capital so that they could buy more slaves and generate more profit. They decided to first mortgage their slaves and then turn those mortgages into bonds that could be marketed and sold internationally.

Cotton plantations were risky businesses and slaveholders came up with a scheme to back their dealings by state governments and their treasuries. If a cotton crop failed or a slave insurrection was successful, the state would be required to pay the debts using taxpayer dollars.

The private prison industry is a legacy of this kind of finance offered to risky business ventures, backed by public funds.

The U.S. immigration prison system, itself, is the greatest public charge on taxpayers and the public good – not immigrants seeking asylum or refuge.

We call on the government to divest from private prisons and invest in community-based organizations that can help to respond to the needs and dreams of newly arrived immigrants, ensuring that we understand the root causes of migration in the process.

In the meantime, we are working to bond out 100 people from immigration detention with $1 mil & provide post-release services.

Within a week, we’ve bonded 5 people out of immigrant prisons using the Freedom100 Fund.

Learn more: static1.squarespace.com/static/5a33042…

#AbolishDetention