Matthew J. Parker: The ICEY Fingers of Our Prison Industry

President Trump’s immigration push is just the latest move in our long history of incarceration for profit. I wallowed for a decade or so behind bars while watching so-called tough-on-crime Republicans ride the fear of us law-breaking drug addicts to election success again and again, which left President Bill Clinton little choice but to jump on the paddy wagon.

Most Republicans went along with his Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 because it adhered to the rhetoric, right or wrong, that voters latch onto concerning crime. But not Newt Gingrich. He made a career of dividing and conquering Americans based on lie-laced whining. McKay Coppins, in his article “The Man Who Broke Politics,” affirms this: “I think that his defining legacy is that he enshrined this combative, tribal, angry attitude in politics that would infect our national discourse in Washington and Congress for decades to come.” Gingrich’s goal was to fulfill the fantasy that government doesn’t work, and he’s done a damn good job of it.

His progeny are the Tea Party and Freedom Caucus, respectively. The former tried to repeal Obamacare over 70 times, while the latter, according to “The forever grievance” by Geoffrey Kabaservice, “was distinctive for its determination to destroy bipartisan cooperation, deny Obama any legislative achievements or real legitimacy, and dethrone [House Speaker John] Boehner, who appeared too willing to cut deals with the Democrats.” The caucus indeed continues to pester the House with the same Gingrichean obstruction to this day. 

For these and other reasons, I’d habitually put more faith in the Upper Chamber, but that ended after I witnessed one too many legislators flip-flopping on the Senate floor during the cool down after January 6. Fearing a Trump comeback, I sent all fifty Republican Senators an actual letter (along with a dozen or so bear-witness copies to choice Democrats) via snail mail. Entitled “Uncivil Disobedience: A Foul-Mouth Form of Good Trouble,” it’s a four-page diatribe peppered with insults and four-letter-words imploring them to find Trump guilty of inciting an insurrection, and this so he can never run again. A typical excerpt follows:

“A blissfully banal flimflam man, Trump positively percolates lies which then drip, g-norrhea-like, from his tongue, infecting everyone within earshot. Given this, let’s be clear about the rules: deceit is the epitome of incivility. So calling Trump a despotic rope dick is merely a counter to his ceaseless lies and insults; is in fact a stand against incivility because it’s pitting veracity, the height of civility, against mendacity, its notorious low.”

As noted, it’s the bald-faced lying that irks me most, along with the Senators’ collective certitude that their appeasement of such resolute dishonesty will remain consequence free. They also, of course, conveniently ignore his multifarious avarice as well as his self-serving ploys of ignorance, as if these vices, too, are as charming as his mendacity. On the former, his bitcoin peddling has earned him $4 billion since taking office, and on the latter lies his assertion that citizens cannot bring firearms to protests. 

Regrettably, U.S. Senators are just the vanguard conducting a seemingly endless parade of sycophants goosestepping in the Trump malfeasance parade. One can’t help but wonder, however, exactly how they explain it all to children and grandchildren. How does one spin such gloating hatred and comprehensive corruption before so many innocent faces?

Then there’s the optics: United States’ Senators lined up to kiss Trump’s ass even as he pooh-poohs their Constitutional powers, in front of everybody, including the aforementioned children. Note, too, the phony smiles plastered across their faces; smiles hiding castrated tongues even as they attune their ears to pick up his dog whistles – the same insidious sirens, by the way, which propagate his unelected lackey’s incessant lies. Yes, those lackeys, the selfsame clown car of autocratic incompetents our esteemed Senators so unflinchingly confirmed. That’s your conservative stand-ins occupying the Upper Chamber; frightened puppies very publicly peeing all over the Senate floor like latent J6ers, too absorbed in their own self-interest to smell the foulness even when the president gleefully rubs their noses in it.

But the pinnacle of their pusillanimity is that he’s their creation; Frankenstein terrorizing our cities. It’s the Senate, along with the Lower Chamber, who’ve spent decades nullifying even a whiff of comprehensive immigration reform while simultaneously encouraging American businesses to both hire and demonize the cheap labor. 

Which leads us right back to the greed. Jonathan Samual, in his piece, “Epstein Files and Erratic ICE Raids: Who’s Cashing In on Human Misery?”, states, “Here’s a number that should make you physically ill: 11,000% return on investment. That’s what the three largest immigration deportation and prison companies—GEO Group, CoreCivic, and CSI Aviation—are projected to receive in fiscal year 2026 after dumping $4.7 million into GOP campaign coffers in 2024. Their reward? An estimated $5.2 billion in increased annual revenue and $520 million in profit, all extracted from the bodies of detained migrants.” And this is all bonus. They’re all still fat as blowfish on the drug war.   

Lastly, I could almost comprehend the ICE surge if it was really about deporting those who entered the country illegally in front of so many others attempting to do so by the book. This is what Kristi ICE-Bones Noem claims in her commercial even as Trump and his pet goon Steven Miller insist they’re rounding up the worst of the worst. Truth, however, prevails. I mean, where are the perp walks? Is a five-year-old really the best they can do?

Given our carceral history, however, along with the sheer glee in their voices as they war whoop around Alligator Alcatraz, I tend to believe Noem. In fact, I encourage her to raid those meat packing plants in South Dakota. Sioux Falls is just a four-hour drive from Minneapolis, and 90 minutes from her hometown. She could ride in on her horse and personally arrest both the Smithfield Foods and Wholestone Farms execs – you know, the ones who’ve been so impudently hiring so many workers illicitly for so many years – and then personally perp walk them for being such shameless lawbreakers. Indeed, if she were really smart she’d build another prison – uh, excuse me, Immigration Detention Center – in Sioux Falls. She could call it High Plains Penitentiary, and tout how its design, so close to the actual Pig Pens, will save us a fortune on prisoner transport. It is the affordability, stupid, after all.

Copyright 2026 Matthew J. Parker

Matthew J. Parker teaches writing at UC Berkeley.