Border surveillance in Lukeville, Arizona. Financing Border Wars.
Elbit, G4S, Classic Air Charter, CoreCivic and GEO Group are among the corporations profiteering and abusing human rights of migrants and refugees on the U.S. southern border, new report reveals
By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
Elbit Systems is among 23 global companies listed as profiteers abusing the human rights of migrants and refugees around the world.
Elbit is currently constructing spy towers, integrated fixed towers, on the Tohono O'odham Nation, which allows the U.S. Border Patrol to stalk the most vulnerable O'odham, including women, children and elderly.
The Israeli defense contractor Elbit is protested globally because of its border security in Palestine.
The new report, "Financing Border Wars," details the push for border walls, drones and biometrics -- including iris scans and finger prints -- which violate the international human rights of migrants and refugees. The abuse includes tracking surveillance on phones and social media.
The border industry is directly linked to global arms sales, torture in prisons, and provides facial recognition from inside vehicles at the US Mexico border.
Reuters is providing ICE with information, the new report shows.
Australia, Europe and the United States are leading the global push to profiteer from the border surveillance and detainment of migrants and refugees.
'Financing Border Wars,' points out that divestment was an important strategy in ending Apartheid in South Africa, and is now making an impact toward ending reliance on fossil fuels and big oil.
Divestment could help halt the global human rights abuses by border profiteers, the report states.
Corporations profiteering from misery in Arizona
As previously reported by Censored News, G4S, based in the UK and Europe, operates the migrant detention buses on the Arizona border. G4S has been sued by inmates in London and Australia for abuse.
G4S staff has been employed in prisons in Palestine, Guantanamo, UK and Africa where inmates were victims of torture.
GEO Group operates private migrant prisons nationwide
In the new report, G4S and GEO Group are among the 23 corporations listed as border profiteers abusing human rights. Both are leading human rights abusers in detention and imprisonment, facing allegations of violence and abuse.
Core Civic, formerly Corrections Corporation of America, operates private for-profit prisons in the U.S. and is listed among the 23 profiteers.
Currently, the ICE contracted facility in Eloy, Arizona, has failed to provide COVID-19 safety, as the virus rampages through for-profit prisons, news reports reveal.
https://americanindependent.com/dhs-inspector-general-report-covid-safety-violations-ice-for-profit-prison-corecivic-immigration/
Wackenhut once employed security guards at Peabody Coal on Black Mesa. Then Wackenhut split into two companies for maximum profiteering from misery. Wackenhut Transportation gained the contract on the Arizona border to transport detained migrants. GEO Group now operates migrant prisons for profit nationwide. A second company, CoreCivic, which changed its name from Corrections Corporation of America, operates private migrant prisons for profit in Arizona. In Eloy, Arizona, the coronavirus has rampaged through the prison due to company failures. Both GEO and CoreCivic are listed in a new global report exposing 23 companies profiteering and violating the human rights of migrants and refugees. Read more at Censored News.
The report points out abuses by U.S. Border Patrol agents, who have killed migrants on the Arizona border, and poured out life saving water.
In Australia, migrants have been transported out of the country to Nauru and Papua New Guinea for processing.
Elbit's contracts, destruction and surveillance
The Israeli defense contractor Elbit is already operating spy towers on the Nogales, Arizona, border region, and tracking travelers with border tower surveillance.
Elbit's $145 million contract was granted by U.S. Homeland Security during the Obama administration in 2014 and then continued during the Trump administration.
The U.S. contract award was increased in 2019 to include the Tohono O'odham Nation and was celebrated in Haifa, Israel.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/elbit-systems-us-subsidiary-awarded-additional-26-million-contract-to-provide-integrated-fixed-towers-system-in-arizona-300875139.html
The Tohono O'odham Nation government approved the spy towers on its sovereign land. The towers, however, continue to be opposed by traditional O'odham.
The Gu-Vo District opposed the spy towers by resolution, stating the construction would destroy O'odham burial places and violates the O'odham way of life.
Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems is now completing construction of a spy tower on the western portion in a remote O'odham community on the Tohono O'odham Nation. Photo copyright Ofelia Rivas. Wackenhut bus at Three Points, Arizona, under US contract to transport detained migrants. G4S in the UK now owns Wackenhut Transportation and the contract. Photo Brenda Norrell.
Classic Air is former CIA subcontactor
Classic Air Charter transports migrants for ICE. It is a former CIA subcontractor that provided rendition flights to destinations of U.S. torture.
Classic Air Charter, based in Florida, has been transporting migrants under U.S. contract from the Texas border; Mesa, Arizona and elsewhere.
https://documentedny.com/2018/07/13/former-cia-subcontractor-deports-immigrants-for-ice/
Currently, Classic Air Charter, under U.S. government contract, is arranging all deportation flights in the Americas -- including migrants and refugees who
are considered high risk and non-cooperative, according to news reports.
https://capitalandmain.com/classic-air-a-link-in-the-international-deportation-chain-forced-to-pay-back-wages-to-workers-0112
Migrants have been subjected to abuse and violence on these flights, the report states.
Facial recognition at US Mexico border
Among the abuses that the public has not been aware of is the vehicle facial recognition on the US Mexico border, carried out by cameras of the controversial Oak Ridge National Labs in Tennessee, the report reveals.
Oak Ridge is the top secret lab that began plutonium research in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project.
Reuters providing ICE with info
.
The report states:
A media multinational, Thomson Reuters is
best known as the parent company of the
press agency, Reuters. It is less well-known
that its portfolio also includes legal and datacollection and analysis software and services.
Thomson Reuters has earned millions from contracts with CBP and
especially ICE, in particular through its subsidiaries Legal West and
Thomson Reuters Special Services (TRSS). Most of this comes from
giving ICE access to databases with public and proprietary information,
license-plate scanning data and real-time jail-booking data.
TRSS was contracted, for up to $3.4 million, to ‘help
ICE monitor ‘possible threats’ against the agency’s officials’ ...
Reuters was exposed in an NBC investigation in 2018.
Divesting
The new report reveals that in Europe, financers have pulled out of financing for both Elbit and G4S, and dis-invested, because of human rights violations.
'Financing Border Wars' reports that the Norwegian Pension Fund, Danske Bank and the French investment firm AXA, have halted financing for Elbit.
In 'Financing Border Wars,' the Transnational Institute, TNI, describes the human rights abuses and their corporate funders.
The report also describes corporate border abusers in Ireland and Italy -- as well as Lockheed Martin weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and UAE.
The report states:
The Smart Borders sector encompasses the use of a broad range of (newer) technologies, including biometrics (such as fingerprints and iris-scans), AI and phone and social media tracking. The goal is to speed up processes for national citizens and other acceptable travellers and stop or deport unwanted migrants through the use of more sophisticated IT and biometric systems. Key corporations include large IT companies, such as IBM and Unisys, and multinational services company Accenture for whom migration is part of their extensive portfolio, as well as small firms, such as IDEMIA and Palantir Technologies, for whom migration-related work is central. The French public–private company Civipol, co-owned by the state and several large French arms companies, is another key player, selected to set up fingerprint databases of the whole population of Mali and Senegal, reports TNI.
The most prominent examples of direct human rights abuses come from the corporations involved in detention and deportation. Classic Air Charter, Cobham, CoreCivic, Eurasylum, G4S, GEO Group, Mitie and Serco all have faced allegations of violence and abuse by their staff towards migrants.
The report investigates five key sectors of the expanding industry: border security (including monitoring, surveillance, walls and fences), biometrics and smart borders, migrant detention, deportation, and audit and consultancy services. From these sectors, it profiles 23 corporations as significant actors: Accenture, Airbus, Booz Allen Hamilton, Classic Air Charter, Cobham, CoreCivic, Deloitte, Elbit, Eurasylum, G4S, GEO Group, IBM, IDEMIA, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, Mitie, Palantir, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Serco, Sopra Steria, Thales, Thomson Reuters, Unisys.
The Vanguard Group owns shares in 15 of the 17 companies, including over 15% of the shares of CoreCivic and GEO Group that manage private prisons and detention facilities.
Other important investors are Blackrock, which is a major shareholder in 11 companies, Capital Research and Management (part of the Capital Group), with shares in arms giants Airbus and Lockheed Martin, and State Street Global Advisors (SsgA), which owns over 15% of Lockheed Martin shares and is also a major shareholder in six other companies.
Facebook
Facebook board member had contract with ICE to track migrants and their relationships, NBC news reported in 2018.
"Palantir, whose chairman, Peter Thiel, is one of nine members on the board of Facebook, took in more than $4.9 million from ICE on May 30, part of a $39 million contract that began in 2015. According to a government database search, the contract goes toward “operations and maintenance” of Falcon, Palantir’s proprietary intelligence database that tracks immigrants’ records and relationships."
