The CEO of Brentwood-based CoreCivic is urging Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to act with speed in inking contracts for immigration detention centers after Democrats scored big wins in last week’s elections. “We would urge the ICE administration to move quickly,” President and CEO Lucibeth Mayberry said during a quarterly earnings call on Thursday. “They have a need for…
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The next Congress will include about 100 new lawmakers in the House of Representatives, the largest freshman wave in decades. That also includes six newly elected members of the Democratic Socialists of America, bringing the total number of DSA members in Congress to eight. One of the incoming DSA congressmembers will be California’s Angela Gonzales-Torres, who worked two other jobs while…
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PACs and executives from three of the leading private prison companies have donated close to $1.2 million to candidates, fundraising committees, and political party committees during this year’s midterm election cycle, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records. A GEO Group subsidiary, GEO Reentry Services LLC, donated an additional $4.4 million to MAGA Inc.
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In 2024, Donald Trump won the presidency with the support of 44% of Hispanic voters, suggesting that a major realignment in party preferences might be underway. But just two years later, it appears much of that support has eroded. Sixty-one percent of Hispanic voters say they will now support Democrats in the midterms, including 11% who previously had voted for President Trump. We get a bird’…
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In this episode of Rattling the Bars, Mansa Musa speaks with independent journalist Victoria Valenzuela, who reports for a wide range of news outlets on incarceration in California and Louisiana. Victoria’s recent articles shed light on the inhumane conditions at California City Detention Center—specifically its no-contact visitation policy, making it the only detention center in California to enact such a rule. CCDC is operated by the for-profit corporation CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America), an organization with a history marred by systemic violence that is currently capitalizing on Trump’s mass deportation policies to expand its detention contracts.
In the second half of the conversation, Mansa and Victoria discuss the circumstances of incarcerated women domestic violence survivors in California and the potential for prison abolition. They note that the state’s incarcerated women population has decreased from roughly 11,000 to 3,700 over two decades.
Related link:
Families Are Fighting Draconian No-Contact-Visit Policy at California ICE Jail via Truthout
Victoria Valenzuela’s Substack
Credits:
Production/Post-production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa. Today I’m speaking with reporter Victoria Valenzuela about a recent reporting on incarceration in California. Thank you for joining me, Victoria. Please introduce yourself to our audience.
Victoria Valenzuela:
Hi, I’m Victoria. Thank you so much for having me. I’m an independent journalist. I’ve been reporting on families and individuals impacted by incarceration for five years. I’ve been published in a variety of news outlets, about 30 now, and that includes The Guardian, Truth Out, Prism, The Real News Network, Buzzfeed News, USA Today, documented a bunch of different
Today is Election Day, and voting rights advocates are encouraging voters to assert their rights and go to the polls with confidence if they have not already cast a ballot. Meanwhile, Republicans continue to play defense after a surge in early voting, particularly among Black and Latino voters who were the targets of gerrymandering and voter suppression efforts. In addition to promoting…
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