From his crackdown on illegal immigration to his reversal of Obama administration policies on criminal justice and policing, Sessions is methodically reshaping the Justice Department to reflect his nationalist ideology and hard-line views � moves drawing comparatively less public scrutiny than the ongoing investigations into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with the Kremlin.
Sessions has implemented a new charging and sentencing policy that calls for prosecutors to pursue the most serious charges possible, even if that might mean minority defendants face stiff, mandatory minimum penalties. He has defended the president�s travel ban and tried to strip funding from cities with policies he considers too friendly toward undocumented immigrants.
Sessions has even adjusted the department�s legal stances in cases involving voting rights and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues in a way that advocates warn might disenfranchise poor minorities and give certain religious people a license to discriminate.
Supporters and critics say the attorney general has been among the most effective of the Cabinet secretaries � implementing Trump�s conservative policy agenda even as the president publicly and privately toys with firing him over his decision to recuse himself from the Russia case.
Supporters suggest that this is simply a return to a Justice Department that "respects the rule of law."
But the truth is that it is a return to a Justice Department that can once again openly discriminate against minorities, immigrants, and the LGBTQ community.
Oh and one that can benefit major Trump donors from the private prison industry.
Courtesy of The Observer:
The private prison industry has thrived under Trump. Shortly after the election, stocks soared for the two largest private prison corporations, GEO Group and CoreCivic. Trump�s Department of Justice reversed a plan to reduce the use of private prisons in February 2017, paving the way for new government contracts for the industry. In April 2017, the GEO Group received a $110 million government contract to build an immigrant detention center in Texas. The same month, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) gave CoreCivic a contract extension on its 1,000 bed immigrant processing center in Houston, Texas. GEO Group has received $774 million in government contracts in 2017 so far, and the company�s stocks have continually increased in response. This week, Bank of America increased its ownership of the company�s stock by over 2500 percent due to favorable forecasts. CoreCivic has ongoing contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice worth several billion dollars. The stock price for both companies has increased over 100 percent since Trump was elected.
In August 2017, officials from GEO Group and CoreCivic said they anticipate earnings to increase in tandem with immigrant detention time. In February 2017, a leaked memo from the Trump administration cited plans to double the capacity of beds at immigration detention centers from 31,000-34,000 individuals held daily to 80,000. This immigration policy coupled with Attorney General Sessions� intent to revamp the war on drugs, which caused the United States to have the highest incarceration rate in the world, means that the private prison industry can expect a surge in government contracts and profits throughout Trump�s presidency.
It is no coincidence that one of the largest private prison companies in the country recently held its leadership conference at a Trump golf resort.
This is a symbiotic relationship.
The Justice Department implements policies which create more convicts, and the private prison industry creates more cells to hold them at taxpayers expense.
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