By Sarah Lazare / AlterNet
Agency’s announcement sheds
light on questionable composition of DHS Advisory Council.
http://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/shocker-military-insiders-and-war-profiters-will-be-reviewing-horrendous-private
The DHS declared on Monday
that it will review its widespread use of for-profit immigrant detention
centers, in what amounts to an implied acknowledgment that human rights abuses
plague its prisons, some of which house mothers with their children.
If the announcement translates
into meaningful action, it could help chip away at the political power of a
private prison industry that has aggressively lobbied for harsh immigration
policies, including the congressional immigrant detention quota, which today
directs Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hold an average of 34,000 people
in detention on a daily basis. Meanwhile, the announcement left many wondering whether the federal agency will also revisit
mass detentions and deportations of refugees, immigrants and migrants, which
have soared torecord levels under the administration of President
Barack Obama.
However, a critical aspect of
the DHS announcement has gone overlooked. The federal agency’s plan is
contingent on a review process initiated by the so-called “Homeland Security
Advisory Council.” Here is what DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said that process will look like:
On Friday, I directed our
Homeland Security Advisory Council, chaired by Judge William Webster, to
evaluate whether the immigration detention operations conducted by Immigration
and Customs Enforcement should move in the same direction.
Specifically, I have asked
that Judge Webster establish a Subcommittee of the Council to review our
current policy and practices concerning the use of private immigration
detention and evaluate whether this practice should be eliminated. I asked that
the Subcommittee consider all factors concerning ICE’s detention policy and
practice, including fiscal considerations.
The Advisory Council that will steer this process is a
roll call of war profiteers, torture defenders, human rights abusers and
private sector heavyweights. Meanwhile, as Bob Libal, the executive director of
the advocacy organization Grassroots Leadership, noted in an interview with
AlterNet, “There is a severe lack of any immigrant or immigrant advocacy
representation on the committee. I don’t think there is anyone who has been
impacted by detention, let alone private detention.”
Webster, the only person to
have served as the director of both the FBI and the CIA, played a critical role during the late 1980s in covering up the Iran
Contra scandal. He later founded the
mercenary company Diligence, which provided security for corporations that
profited off of the U.S. occupation of Iraq post-2003, before retiring as a
partner of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, LLP.
The vice chair of the council
is NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton, a nationally influentialarchitect of draconian “broken windows” policing who
recently warned of unspecified terror threats to wrangle large purchases of military-style gear for his
department. Bratton’s career includes extensive ties with corporate
surveillance firms that have sparked accusations of conflicts of interest.
Bratton recently announced that, in September, he will step down in
September from his position at the helm of the NYPD and will be taking a
lucrative private security with the Teneo Holdings firm.
Retired Marine General John
Kelly is also included on the council. As chief of U.S. Southern Command, he vigorously defended U.S. torture of detainees at
Guantanamo Bay, including advocating force feeding of prisoners on hunger
strike as recently as 2014. Before that position, he served in high-ranking
posts overseeing the occupation of Iraq. Kelly is not the only council member
to serve as a general who enforced U.S. occupation. Retired Marine general John
Allen, also included on the council, oversaw the occupation of Afghanistan and,
more recently, the nebulous U.S. war against ISIS.
The council also includes many
who have built their careers and fortunes off of profits from U.S. wars and
conflicts. Thad Allen is the current executive vice president of Booz Allen
Hamilton, a mercenary and private intelligence contracting company that,
notably, has wonlucrative contracts from DHS. Norman Augustine is the
retired chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin Corp, the largest weapons company in the world.
The council even includes
Chuck Canterbury, the national president of the Fraternal Order of Police who
has emerged as a prominent advocate of a change in federal
law to make attacks on police hate crimes. Michael Nutter, the former mayor of
Philadelphia who oversaw the
gutting and privatization of the city’s public school system, is also included
among the council’s members.
It is too soon to determine
what the subcommittee, to be appointed by the advisory council, will find
during its review process, and human rights campaigners like Libal are still
holding out hope that the body will strike a blow against the power of the
private prison industry. But at the very least, Johnson’s announcement sheds
light on the revolving door between the DHS and powerful players in the
mercenary sector, law enforcement and military.
According to Johnson, “a
subcommittee of the HSAC will undertake this review, and the full HSAC will
provide to me and the Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement its
written report of its evaluation no later than November 30, 2016.”
The statement indicates that,
once the review takes place, key decision-making power will rest with Johnson,
who has overseen an escalation in raids and deportations this summer
targeting refugees fleeing Central America, including teenagers on their way to school and children as young
as four.
The full membership of the
Advisory Council is as follows:
William Webster (Chair)-
Retired Partner, Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, LLP
Commissioner William Bratton
(Vice Chair) – Police Commissioner, City of New York
Art Acevedo – Chief of Police,
Austin Police Department, Texas
Steve Adegbite – Chief
Information Security Officer, E*TRADE Financial Corp.
John R. Allen – General, U.S.
Marine Corps (Ret.)
Thad W. Allen- Executive Vice
President, Booz|Allen|Hamilton
Norman Augustine- Retired
Chairman and CEO, Lockheed Martin Corp.
Ron Barber- Consultant for
Government Relations, Policy Analysis, Legislative Advocacy and Customer
Relations, Public and Private entities
Chuck Canterbury- National
President, The Fraternal Order of Police
Richard Danzig- Senior
Advisor, John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory
Elaine C. Duke- Principal,
Elaine Duke & Associates, LLC
Marshall Fitz- Senior Fellow,
Center for American Progress
Paul Goldenberg- President and
CEO, Cardinal Point Strategies, LLC
Lee H. Hamilton- Director,
Center on Congress, Indiana University
Jane Harman, President and
CEO, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Elizabeth Holtzman- Co-chair,
Herrick’s Government Relations Group,
Jim Jones, Chairman-
ManattJones Global Strategies
Juliette Kayyem- Founder of
Juliette Kayyem Solutions, LLC
Gary Kelly- President and CEO,
Southwest Airlines
John Kelly- General, U.S.
Marine Corps (Ret.)
Carie A. Lemack- Cofounder and
CEO of DreamUp
Wilson Livingood- President
and Partner, Livingood Advisors, LLC
Jane Holl Lute- Special
Coordinator on Improving United Nations Response to sexual exploitation and
abuse
John Magaw- Consultant,
Domestic and International
Christian Marrone- CoS to the
CEO, VP of Government Relations, CSRA Inc.
David Martin- Professor of
International Law- University of Virginia School of Law
Jeffrey Miller- Senior Vice
President, MSA Security
Jeff Moss- Founder of Black
Hat and DEF CON Conferences
Dr. Ned Norris Jr.- Former
Chairman of the Tohono O’odham Nation
Michael Nutter- Former Mayor
of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Mathew Olsen- President of
Consulting and Co-Founder, IronNet Cybersecurity
Farah Pandith- Adjunct Senior
Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations
Annise Danette Parker- Former
Mayor, City of Houston, Texas
John S. Pistole- President,
Anderson University
Robert Rose- Senior Advisor to
the CEO, Securonix
Harold A. Schaitberger-
General President, International Association of Firefighters
Ali H. Soufan- Chairman and
CEO, The Soufan Group LLC
Paul Stockton- Managing
Director, Sonecon LLC
Karen Tandy- Administrator
(Ret.), Drug Enforcement Administration
Lydia W. Thomas- Retired
President and CEO, Noblis, Inc.
No comments:
Post a Comment