Emily Goldman is a human rights lawyer and the founder of Educators 4 Migrant Justice, an organization fighting to get pension funds to divest from organizations involved with abusive migrant policies.
In the course of her work there, Emily naturally has to rummage about in online DHS data bases.
Below is some of what she has found there:
The earlier tweet about MVM's contracts for holding migrants at GITMO has been deleted because it was apparently causing confusion.
So, to summarize, MVM has a contract with DHS to provide unarmed guards for the migrant operations center at #GITMO. https://t.co/EcnsYM4EUh
— Emily Claire Goldman (@mle_goldman) June 30, 2019
Who is MVM?
MVM is a company headquartered in Ashburn, Virginia, United States. It is a private security contractor that provides security contractors, staffing, training, translation and related services to U.S. Governmentclients including being a contractor for administrating Trump administration family separation policy.
At the direction of the company’s leadership, MVM has removed job postings related to readiness operations under the current zero tolerance policy.
MVM currently holds multiple multimillion-dollar contracts with multiple US government agencies, including the Justice Department, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), State Department, United States Marshals Service, the Washington, D.C. Public Schools system, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Among these is a $162 million contract with ICE to transport unaccompanied minor migrants. In July 2018, it was reported that MVM used a Phoenix, Arizona office building to provide unaccompanied minors shelter for up to three weeks despite not being zoned for human occupancy or having a state license to serve as a child care facility. According to ICE, it was for those “awaiting same-day transport with a more comfortable and private atmosphere than they might otherwise have at a public transportation hub”.
Back to Emily:
According to the Q&A attached to the solicitation for that award, the contractor specifically inquired about holding migrant children at that facility and was told that several migrant children have in fact been held there within the past few years. https://t.co/ilYgOYQFX0
— Emily Claire Goldman (@mle_goldman) June 30, 2019
MVM already has several contracts with DHS to transport unaccompanied migrant children (ex. https://t.co/Owa1VdTMs8) & the RFP for one of those contracts specifies that the contractor has the discretion to determine what information is shared before children are moved. Plus ?? pic.twitter.com/OqZyJZ9sbI
— Emily Claire Goldman (@mle_goldman) June 30, 2019
Larger view of documents:
(UAC — Unaccompanied Alien child/ FAMU – Family Unit/ERO Enforcement and Removal (ICE)/ ORR — Office of Refugee Resettlement)
If we're waiting for the Trump administration to provide prior, written notice of where they plan on hiding these children, we're going to be waiting a while.
Connecting the dots above should raise a lot of red flags that need to be addressed.
— Emily Claire Goldman (@mle_goldman) June 30, 2019
Then Emily points to this:
“the Defense Department awarded a $23 million dollar contract to construct a “Contingency Mass Migration Complex” at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station”
I’ve Been to Guantanamo. It’s No Place for Kids. | American Civil Liberties Union https://t.co/49HXjkAQvY
— Fish ? (@JeffBfish) June 30, 2019
The numbers are slightly different but I believe Fish is referring this contract awarded to RQ Construction
“RQ Awarded Contingency Mass Migration Complex
RQ Construction is pleased to announce that we have been awarded the Contingency Mass Migration Complex at NS Guantanamo Bay. The project will include site shaping for tents, concrete pads for camp headquarters, galleys and dumpsters, perimeter and service roads, and a mass notification system. Supporting facilities include utility systems (electrical, water, and sanitary sewer), exterior lighting, information systems to include fiber optic cable service, utility infrastructure expansion, vehicle parking area, storm drainage, and removal of two family housing trailer units. The contract also contains 10 unexercised options, which if exercised would increase cumulative contract value to $27,117,000. Click here to view our award card.”
In short that money appropriated last week ain’t goin’ for dental hygiene or mattresses.
It is going towards building a “Mass Migration Complex” in Gitmo, a place beyond the reach of demonstrators, good Samaritans, or even U.S. Legislators.
Follow Emily at her own account or at the Educators 4 Migrant Justice link above for updates.
Thank FSM for folks like Emily who keep an eye on the bastards.
Please follow me on Twitter @durrati
First they criminalize people for coming to the one country where they feel safe, even if they don’t have the correct papers, and those in charge refuse to follow the laws that require giving asylum to people who ask.
Then they send them to an invisible prison that they control and won’t allow media to visit….
What’s next, is pretty obvious to some of us.
Kind of amazed they didn’t start with Gitmo, actually.
This contract was first signed in June of 2017. Various options and administrative actions between then and now.
So maybe they did.
I really wondered why Trump wanted to go back to rotten relations with Cuba.
Can’t have pesky investigators free to travel around and find out what’s happening.
Oh, that part about Cuba is easy to answer, Nancy: he’s an idiot who hates brown people and thinks he can outsmart or overpower anyone. The Cubans might be more than happy to help us if things go too far over there.
Welcome to the USA of the 21st Century.
It’s not like Dimwit Donny and his minions learned nothing from the 20th Century.
Just the wrong things.
Not that concentration camps are bad, but how to do them.
It seems to me, thinking back to Hitler and his band of merry ass hole ss personnel assigned to compress unwanted people into a system of collection points, way out in the woods, where, if you were still alive in that packed cattle car, you were judged as to your physical worth as you left the car … you went to the right or left as the uniformed man told you, one way you filed into stinking barracks with minimal life support, the other way lead you into the gas chambers and ovens, where you went out of the camp in the smoke from the tall chimneys.
Is that Trump’s next step, building a huge incinerator system in the back corner of GITMO? What family? What kids?
That is an extreme comparison, BUT, with no oversight, no access to the health treatments or records, NO voice for the children allowed, WTF does Trump and his WH staff of Zeros think they will do to and with these children?
Where is the outrage from McConnell and the rest of the Secret Society of the Senate … who the HELL is writing checks for these bastards and their construction crews/unarmed brown shirts?
I thought ALL government spending was filtered through our House … which DOES allow budgets to function with OUR money …. is there a step-back, hell no we can generate against Trump on this? Misappropriated funding, lying to Congress yet again to get funding for this monstrosity being built out of sight and proper treatment … if I was on a couple committees, there I’d sure as hell want to know if the shitgibbon was responsible for this … by all signs he already is, but he seems to think he is above the laws and continues to lie about everything to Congress and the public as well … how he plans to spend our money for his idiotic projects … this information should go very public about the concentration camp for, forever lost children and families …
The private concentration camps are already guilty of abuse and huge amounts of grift … WE NEED to pull the plug on Trump and this barrage of inhuman treatment of defenseless children …
Trump wants to become a Dictator.