McKinsey & Company, the international consulting firm for hire, has been hired by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). McKinsey has reportedly received "more than $20 million in consulting work for ICE[.]" Ian MacDougall, Consulting Giant's Focus Was Making Deportations Faster and Cheaper / Agency Workers Saw Some Ideas As Too Harsh on Immigrants, NEW YORK TIMES, Wed., December 4, 2019, at p. A21 (New York Times may charge for online access to this report that it copublished along with ProPublica). That's $20 Million out of our taxes, of course.
McKinsey focused on "detention savings opportunities" with respect to the apprehension and detention of immigrants by the current regime. McKinsey proposed cutting spending on food, for example. McKinsey also proposed cutting medical care. Tasked with detention savings opportunities, McKinsey did not overlook "cutbacks in guard staffing," which was reportedly the place in the ICE budget where the greatest detention savings opportunities were made. Ian MacDougall, Consulting Giant's Focus Was Making Deportations Faster and Cheaper / Agency Workers Saw Some Ideas As Too Harsh on Immigrants, NEW YORK TIMES, Wed., December 4, 2019, at p. A21 (New York Times may charge for online access to this report that it copublished along with ProPublica).
At least some of these cuts were too much even for people at ICE. They pointed out that cutting back on food and medicine would affect the health of people held in ICE custody, and of course that is what has happened, according to other reports.
ICE agents also pointed out that many of McKinsey's cuts were illegal under existing regulations. In response to these points, McKinsey's agents reported these ICE personnel to their ICE managers, saying that they stood in the way of the detention savings opportunities.
As for the regulations, people at McKinsey & Co. reportedly recommended doing away with at least some of the regulations in order to save on the costs of complying with them such as in providing food and medicine. See Consulting Giant's Focus Was Making Deportations Faster and Cheaper / Agency Workers Saw Some Ideas As Too Harsh on Immigrants, NEW YORK TIMES, Wed., December 4, 2019, at p. A21 (New York Times may charge for online access to this report that it copublished along with ProPublica).
Another of McKinsey & Co.'s tasks was to help implement the current regime's task of adding 10,000 more agents. Yet McKinsey recommended "cutbacks in guard staffing as the source of most cost savings." Id. What then were the agents to be used for, if not guarding immigrants in ICE detention? The newspaper report does not say.
But we know how armed agents have been used that are not used for guarding immigrants in ICE detention.
(Sandy Huffaker.AFP.Getty Images)
It would be foolish to expect that these agents will not be used that way again, perhaps even more so. And it would be foolish not to realize that whenever they are used in those ways in the future, large corporations will be there to make a buck off it.
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