REDEYE 5/2/18

Gov’t-enforced slavery of immigrants nets millions for detention companies
NYT, 4/5 (op-ed J. Stevens) — …Black-shirted federal agents barging into apartment complexes, convenience stores and school pick-up sites…round up…immigrants [promotes]….forced labor — some call it slavery — inside detention facilities….Yes, detention is a business. In 2010, private prisons and their lenders and investors lobbied Congress to pass a law ordering Immigration and Customs Enforcement to maintain contracts for no fewer than 34,000 beds per night. This means that when detention counts are low, people would otherwise be released because they pose no danger…remain locked up, at a cost…of $125 s a day.
The people detained at these facilities do almost all of the work that keeps them running….That includes cooking, serving and cleaning up food, janitorial services, hair-cutting, painting, floor buffing and even vehicle maintenance.
Workers in immigration custody have suffered injuries and even died….Cesar Gonzalez was killed…when his jackhammer hit an electrical cable, sending 10,000 volts of direct current through his body….
Two…detention companies — GEO and CoreCivic…are…violating state minimum wage laws, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and laws prohibiting unjust enrichmen...GEO may be paying just 1.25 percent to 6 percent of minimum wage….That’s tens of millions of dollars GEO…[owes] in back wages to up to 62,000 people….And that’s just at one facility….18 Republican members of the House….asked that those who work while locked up are “not employees” and that federal minimum wage laws do not apply to them.
U.S. rulers’ racist laws confined Black families to ghettos for 100 years
NYT, 4/5 — …The...housing and urban development…agency [HUD]….has prolonged segregation in housing since the 1960s under both Democratic and Republican administrations….allowing cities to confine families to federally financed ghettos that offer little or no access to jobs, transportation or viable schools….
…A lawsuit….accuses HUD of illegally funneling federal money to the city of Houston, despite a 2017 finding by HUD itself that the city was…allowing racially motivated opposition to stop affordable housing projects in white neighborhoods. In a detail reminiscent of the Jim Crow South,…Houston discriminates even at the level of flood relief, maintaining “entirely different (and markedly inferior) drainage systems in predominantly minority neighborhoods, exposing…[them] to increased risk from storms….”
…The residential segregation that is pervasive in the United States today was partly created by explicit federal policies that date back at least to World War I….The federal insistence on segregated housing introduced Jim Crow separation in areas of the country outside the South where it had previously been unknown….Government…housing for defense workers near military installations and factories during World War I was founded on the premise that African-American families would be excluded “even from projects in northern and western industrial centers where they worked in significant numbers.”
The same toxic pattern prevailed under Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, when the government created the first public housing projects for nondefense workers, building separate projects for black people, segregating buildings by race or excluding African-Americans entirely….Racially integrated communities were razed to make way for Jim Crow housing….In 1934…the government typically denied mortgages to African-Americans, shutting out even affluent black people from the suburban homeownership boom…during the middle decades of the 20th century….The vast wealth gap that exists today between whites and African-Americans has its roots in this era.
U.S.-backed Saudis’ Yemen airstrike ‘cut civilians into pieces’
NYT, 4/3 — The heat was stifling, the power out. So the transients, mostly women and children displaced from nearby towns, ventured outside their temporary housing…for some air….Then the Saudi warplanes struck.
…Medics and residents…described…an instant midmorning slaughter in a residential housing area; the warplanes fired missiles at the civilians, cutting them to pieces as they sought relief from the 92-degree temperature. At least 14 were killed and nine wounded….The airstrike was a reminder of the lethal hazards facing unarmed Yemenis from the firepower wielded by the Saudi-led coalition….
“The ambulances could not cross into the targeted areas due to intensity of the jets,…”the director of the city health bureau…said….He said there had been no military presence nearby. Medics…said…only two bodies could be identified. Most of the dead were in pieces.The targeted people were in the open to cool themselves as there was not electricity in the complex….
The United Nations…said that the coalition is responsible for a majority of the roughly 10,000 civilians killed since the Saudis began bombing in March 2015….The United States…has been providing military support to the Saudi coalition…including refueling, intelligence and targeting guidance….
India’s ‘demockracy’ exploits 8- to 14-year-olds in ‘inhuman conditions’
GW, 4/13-19 — [Rajkot is] one of the country’s hubs for cheap artificial jewelry sold in the U.S., UK and European markets….
…Two children were spotted wandering near a train station…in Rajkot after escaping a workshop in the city. There they had worked “day and night” assembling imitation jewelry…often sleeping in the same room with up to a dozen other children and being subjected to frequent beatings.
“They were kept in inhuman conditions and forced to do work that is not suitable to…a child,” said…a deputy commissioner….
So far 73 children — most aged between eight and 14 — have been found in the city, where about 700 imitation jewelry firms are based….Most of the children….had been receiving about ($46) per month….in the $150 million industry in Rajkot.