Contracting firms are benefitting from migrant family separation policy
Central American immigrant families wait outside a Catholic Charities 'respite center.' Photo: John Moore/Getty Images
Intelligence and defense contracting companies are advertising for employment opportunities — to assist the U.S. government with undocumented children after they've been separated from their families, the Daily Beast reports.
The bottom line: The practice, recently adopted by the Trump administration, has been widely and strongly criticized as a violation of rights, and at least one of the companies being called in to help has a record with discrimination and harassment, per the Daily Beast.
The details: MVM Inc. is one of the companies with job postings surrounding children's detention, advertising for a compliance coordinator in San Antonio, Texas, just this week. The job is to help with the "rapid deployment of an Emergency Influx Shelter for unaccompanied children."
- General Dynamics, another defense contracting company, is searching for a "data-entry position" that will "monitor youths' cases as they move through the system."
Yes, but: Per the Daily Beast, MVM had trouble in Iraq when guards working with the CIA and National Security Agency were accused of "procuring and possessing unauthorized weapons and explosives." The lawsuit has since been dismissed. They settled a separate lawsuit last year over discrimination, when a Muslim security guard reported being called a racial slur, and being forced to shave his beard.
What they're saying: An immigration attorney, Matthew Kolken, told the Daily Beast: "I'm guessing that in their mission statement, one of the central components isn't the care of refugee children. It is mind-blowing that those types of industries would be even considered with respect to the care of children."
- Director of MVM's homeland security and public safety division, Joe Arabit, told the Daily Beast: "MVM, Inc.'s top priority is the welfare of children while they are in our care. ... Managing the transportation, security, and shelter needs of these children is a highly sensitive matter, and the safety of those in our care is the most important thing."