‘Stop Scottish investments in Trump’s private prisons’

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This 21 June 2018 video from the USA says about itself:

GEO Group & Private Prisons Stand to Profit as Trump Pushes Indefinite Family Detention

President Donald Trump’s executive order ending family separations at the border opts to indefinitely detain families together instead.

The Nation reports that this policy will directly benefit the two largest prison companies in the United States: GEO Group and CoreCivic, formerly Corrections Corporation of America.

We speak with Bob Libal, the executive director of the Austin-based civil and human rights group Grassroots Leadership. They sued the state of Texas when it tried to classify ICE’s family detention centers as “child care” facilities. They won, but the detention centers continue to operate without a license. His new article in the Texas Observer is headlined, “It’s Time to Decriminalize Immigration”. It is co-authored with Judy Greene.

By Lamiat Sabin in Britain:

Monday, August 13, 2018

Scottish workers to speak out against pensions bankrolling US border jails

UNIONS will hit out this week at the use of Scottish public-sector pension funds to invest in firms which bankroll US border jails.

Unison and Unite are issuing the formal complaint after it emerged that Scots hold £138 million in funds which have huge investments in CoreCivic and GEO Group, which have separated hundreds [thousands] of children from their parents at the southern US border.

The children, many of them infants and toddlers, have been put into detention centres while their parents await prosecution or are deported for attempting to cross the border under a new law that was enacted by US President Donald Trump in May.

Unison head of policy and public affairs Dave Watson told the Sunday Post yesterday that the issue of Scottish workers’ pensions being used to invest in these operations will be flagged up at the union’s pension conference on Friday August 17.

The Post revealed last month that Strathclyde Pension Fund, which manages pensions for 230,000 Scottish public service workers, has £52m invested in Blackrock, Vanguard, Aviva, St James’s Place, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo – all of which fund the US prison operators.

Lothian Pension Fund, with more than 65,000 members, has investments worth £28m with General Dynamics, a multinational defence firm with US contracts to process migrants aged under 16, and Wells Fargo. North East Scotland Pension Fund has investments worth £58m in Blackrock, St James’s Place, Aviva and Vanguard.

USA: After leaked draft executive orders in January 2017, January 2018 and March 2018, an NBC report earlier in August revealed the [Trump] administration’s plans to change existing immigration rules to deny permanent residency and citizenship to legal immigrants who might have accessed any kind of public benefits for themselves or their family members or dependents before submitting their application: here.

Following weeks of rumors, CBS News confirmed Friday that former Marine Corps General John F. Kelly, who served for as secretary of homeland security and White House chief of staff under President Trump, has joined the board of directors of Caliburn International. Caliburn is a for-profit company that runs the nation’s largest facility for unaccompanied migrant children, located in Homestead, Florida, along with three others facilities in Texas. Comprehensive Health Services (CHS), which operates the Homestead facility, was acquired by Caliburn last year and has since become one of the most dominant players in the child immigrant prison industry: here.