How Congress Exploited the Murder of a Young Woman to Detain Immigrants
Business is booming for the private prison industrial complex, and a lot of it has to do with virtue signaling from conservatives exploiting the death of a woman named Laken Riley
Hegemony, according to Britannica, refers to “the dominance of one group over another, often supported by legitimating norms and ideas.”
In short: a true leader amongst leaders. The term American Hegemony refers to the idea that the United States are leaders on the world stage and have been since at least the end of World War II. I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of American Hegemony since Pete Hegseth gave what has charitably been called “dumpster fire” speeches at NATO, but for a different reason: I believe we’re seeing a retreat from a status as a world leader from within our borders in the interest of monetizing misery.
On February 11, 2025, a company had one of their regular earnings calls. For a company that today is valued at over two BILLION dollars, up from 1.5 billion in October 2024, there’s bound to be a lot to celebrate. Business is booming, baby! So… what’s the business?
Well… the business is CoreCivic, one of the largest private prison companies in America.
As reported by Laura Romero the following day for ABC, CoreCivic CEO Damon Hininger is quoted as saying on the call that the Trump administration's new immigration policies will lead to “significant growth.” Specifically, he said, "I've worked at CoreCivic for 32 years, and this is truly one of the most exciting periods of my career. We anticipate significant growth opportunities, perhaps the most significant growth in our company's history over the next several years."
Hininger then specifically goes on to cite executive orders passed on DAY 1 of the Trump presidency for the boom in business, which I just covered a few weeks ago here on Substack and am currently covering, in painstaking detail, over on YouTube in a series of videos comparing the language of Trump’s orders to the language of Project 2025. But one of the significant actions Trump took in his “Fuck You Biden” orders, which are how I refer to his petty rescindance of Biden-era executive orders, was when he reversed an order that had directed the DoJ not to renew contracts with private prison companies.
As a result of Trump’s buddy-buddy status with private prisons, Hininger announced on-call that CoreCivic is rushing to increase capacity wherever possible, potentially in the league of 28,000 more beds, in lieu of new contracts with ICE, who Romero writes CoreCivic speak almost “hourly” with. But don’t worry; at least Hininger ALSO acknowledges that detaining undocumented people at Guantanamo Bay is inhumane. He just, you know… thinks they’d be better off in HIS prisons.
But all of this should come even less as a surprise considering a law that Trump signed on January 29 known as the Laken Riley Act, which Brian Bennett at Time Magazine reports, “would force immigration officers to arrest and detain immigrants in the country unlawfully who were arrested or admitted to minor theft of $100 or more, assaulting a police officer, or “any crime that results in death or serious bodily injury,”” while also expanding “the power that state attorney generals have over federal immigration policy, allowing state officials to sue the federal government to have specific immigrants detained and force the State Department to block visas from countries that won’t take back individuals being deported.”
It’s absolutely no surprise that this would lead to a business boom for a company like CoreCivic.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF CORECIVIC:
CoreCivic, in the grand scheme of things, is a relatively new thing. They’ve technicallyyy only existed since October 2016, but that’s only because they changed their name from the Corrections Corporation of America, or CCA, a company founded in the thick of the Reagan years by a trio of interesting fellas named Thomas W. Beasley, Robert Crants, and T. Don Hutto, whose first humble foray into locking up immigrants was in remodeling a decrepit Houston motel into a ramshackle detention center.
The place was put together so shoddily, it still had the “Day Rates Available” sign up, according to Shane Bauer at Mother Jones. Fun fact - Donny Hutto personally processed 87 undocumented immigrants himself on SUPER BOWL SUNDAY.
CoreCivic, then and now, are a major corporation that own and/or operate jails and prisons under contract with all kinds of government from the local level all the way up to the federal level. They also specialize in creating detention centers for ICE. According to a study done by The American Friends Service Committee, CoreCivic operates 43 prisons and jails, owning 39, and can detain up to 65,000 folks at any given time.
It’s worth noting that CoreCivic didn’t necessarily change their name from CCA to get away from allegations of neglecting prisoners to the point that they die of relatively easy-to-treat diseases… or from reports that costs were cut so low at a Lake Erie prison that there was no running water (and therefore, inmates had to do their business in… plastic freaking bags)... or even confirmations that at least one prison was falsifying its employment data to disguise guards working 48-hour shifts.
I mean, one would think that after multiple reports of corrections officers running a “gladiator school” where they allegedly made inmates fight each other for guards’ amusement, sometimes to the death, that would be reason enough to necessitate a rebrand.
But nope. Officially, the rebrand came as a result of, “the culmination of a multi-year strategy to transform our business from largely corrections and detention services to a wider range of government solutions. The CoreCivic name speaks to our ability to solve the tough challenges facing government at all levels and to the deep sense of service that we feel every day to help people,” according to Damon T. Hininger, the Company’s President and Chief Executive Officer.
ABOUT THE LAKEN RILEY ACT…
I could honestly talk about the absolutely terrifying lore behind CoreCivic all day, or the history of private prisons in the United States being rooted in (what else?) slavery, but we’ll be saving that for a few YouTube videos coming soon.
But right now, you may be asking yourself: what’s with the title? Who is Laken Riley and why would there be an aggressive anti-immigration bill named after her?
You might remember that back in December, we put out an article for paid subscribers about Ballerina Farm, the “trad wife” couple on TikTok who are essentially (allegedly) acting as a sort of red pill for a conservative rag that acts as blatant propaganda known as Evie Magazine, a conservative “alternative to Cosmopolitan,” owned by none other than Conservative superdonor Peter Thiel. Evie peppers its rather typical lifestyle and pop culture articles about everyone from Lana Del Rey to Lindsay Lohan with incredibly asinine articles with titles like ““Joe Rogan Says Bill Gates And Anthony Fauci Are Responsible For "Side Effects, Lying, And Ruining Economies".”
Truly the work of geniuses there.
But back in December, we noticed that there was a rather large focus on a young woman named Laken Riley on the front page of Evie. As I wrote then,
“For full context here, a man named Jose Antonio Ibarra was convicted for life without parole on multiple counts of murder, following the killing of a Georgia nursing student named Laken Riley, as well as being served multiple consecutive sentences for aggravated assault with intent to rape, among others. Not to take away from the tragedy, but you might be wondering why Evie is diving into the true crime space. After all, this doesn’t really fit their “celebration of femininity and virtue,” does it?
Well, that’s the thing. The article isn’t about Laken Riley, and I’d wager the author of the piece, Meredith Evans, wouldn’t care about Laken Riley at all if she weren’t at the middle of the Republican mission to smear undocumented people at all costs. The title of the article?
“MSNBC Changes Headline After Facing Backlash For Empathizing With Laken Riley’s Killer.”
As Evans writes for Evie, “MSNBC's decision to title their piece "Laken Riley's killer never stood a chance" was tone-deaf and insensitive to Laken Riley and her family. After facing backlash, they quietly changed the headline to "The guilt of Laken Riley's killer was never in doubt." The move is a clear sign that they recognized the misstep, but the damage was done.”
Aside from the fact that this piece is presented as original reporting and yet reads as an opinion column, this is a clear and flagrant mischaracterization of MSNBC’s article. In fact, both articles by Meredith Evans for Evie about Laken Riley focus much more on the “illegal immigrant” angle than on Laken Riley, with the title of her original article being “Laken Riley Was Murdered By An Illegal Immigrant—Where's The Outrage?” The subheading? “"George Floyd got 4 televised funerals and 70 days of riots," wrote attorney Eric Matheny on X. "What does Laken Riley get?"”
Following the death of Riley, Republicans in the House drafted a draconian and broad anti-immigration bill “in honor” of her that makes sweeping changes to how the federal government handles the undocumented. As Brian Bennett wrote for Time, we’re now focusing on locking up “immigrants who are in the country unlawfully and suspected of stealing something worth $100 or more, a relatively minor infraction that would include cases of shoplifting.” But what’s worse is that even LEGAL immigrants are affected if they commit minor crimes like shoplifting as well - resulting in the potential loss of their visa and an expulsion from the country.
Due to the sweeping nature of this bill, it’s no surprise that private prison firms are excited. The National Immigration Project estimates that despite ICE being stressed due to the “need to detain an additional ~110,000 people under this law” and the potential cost of “$86 billion over just three years,” the reality is… most undocumented people in detention are held in private prisons. Therefore, “tens of billions of taxpayer dollars will be used to line the pockets of private prison companies.”
Due to the tragic death of a young woman, we are now seeing a complete mockery being made of the American legal system, of our civil rights, and even of the concept of due process. In a recent speech on the house floor, transcribed by Sharon Zhang at Truthout, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez drew a direct line between the law and the gains for the private prison industry:
“Private prison companies are going to get flooded with money. I want folks at home to look at what members of Congress are invested in private prison companies who receive this kind of money and look at the votes on this bill. It is atrocious that people are lining their pockets with private prison profits in the name of a horrific tragedy and the victim of a crime. It is shameful.”
This is what I mean when I say we’re seeing an erosion of American Hegemony: in “honor” of a young woman taken from us too soon, politicians who have vested interests in the private prison industry are selling out our tired, our poor, our huddled masses yearning to breathe free, and it is very likely their pockets will be lined accordingly for their votes.
Steve Scalise received $34,000 for his trouble in 2024. Marsha Blackburn - $37,000. David P. Joyce - $50,000. Rick Scott? $64,000. And GEO Group alone MAXED OUT PAC donations to re-elect Donald Trump. And hey Henry Cuellar, I see you hiding there on OpenSecrets’ tracker for GEO Group recipients!
It’s like I’ve been saying over on TikTok the last couple days: it is incredibly likely we’re witnessing the death of American Hegemony. But it’s just as likely we’re in the front row seats for the birth of Correctional Hegemony.
While Laken Riley is the name on the bill, if she hadn’t been the one there would have been another. There is no doubt in my mind that these modern robber barons would have found a name to virtue signal with no matter what. Friends, now is the time to call your representative in all of their offices and tell them that “The use of a tragedy to pass legislation explicitly designed to enrich one industry is deplorable.” If the representative voted in favor of the bill, add “Due to your support of this bill, I will be voting for your opponent in the upcoming primary and election.”
Massive thanks to V for making this information available for us and explaining it so well.