A group of Jewish Americans gathered Monday (August 5) in the Los Angeles area to protest GEO Group, a private prison company profiting from what they describe as "concentration camps" for migrants.
"As a Jewish American whose ancestors died in a Nazi concentration camp, I am compelled to protest the inhumane caging of asylum seekers and refugees," said Marcy Winograd, the filmer.
"We no longer have to ask ourselves what we would do in the face of new concentration camps because those camps are here and the time is now to demand their closure," Winograd said.
Business was looking good for private prison companies soon after President Donald Trump took office in 2017. Within weeks of his inauguration, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions signed an order reversing an Obama-era directive to phase out private prison use.
That caused shares of the two largest private prison companies — CoreCivic and GEO Group — to soar, with each reaching a post-election peak in April 2017. Since then, however, both companies have lost roughly half their stock market value amid mounting public and investor concerns, while at least eight banks have moved to distance themselves from the private prison business.
