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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums$11 toothpaste: Immigrants pay big for basics at private ICE lock-ups
NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Detained in a California lockup with hundreds of other immigrants seeking asylum, Duglas Cruz faced a choice.
He could content himself with a jailhouse diet that he said left him perpetually hungry. Or he could labor in the prisons kitchen to earn money to buy extra food at the commissary.
Cruz went to work. But his $1-a-day salary at the privately run Adelanto Detention Facility did not stretch far.
A can of commissary tuna sold for $3.25. That is more than four times the price at a Target store near the small desert town of Adelanto, about two hours northeast of Los Angeles. Cruz stuck with ramen noodles at 58 cents a package, double the Target price. A miniature deodorant stick, at $3.35 and more than three days wages, was an impossible luxury, he said.
If I bought that there wouldnt be enough money for food, Cruz said.
Tuna and deodorant would seem minor worries for detainees such as Cruz. Now 25, he sought asylum after fleeing gangs trying to recruit him in his native Honduras, a place where saying no can mean execution.
But immigration attorneys say the pricey commissary goods are part of a broader strategy by private prisons to harness cheap inmate labor to lower operating costs and boost profits.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-detention/11-toothpaste-immigrants-pay-big-for-basics-at-private-ice-lock-ups-idUSKCN1PC0DJ?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews
Blues Heron
(5,955 posts)utterly sickening.
Docreed2003
(16,906 posts)We, as a country, are allowing exploitation of these individuals and it should disgust every one of us!
And somehow I bet trump is getting a "cut" of the profits.
Docreed2003
(16,906 posts)Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
(108,485 posts)Hermit-The-Prog
(33,574 posts)Or the coal company towns of -- always.