Immigration prisons as planned in Kansas are for business, not safety | Opinion

In Kansas, the average worker might hope for a $2,500 bonus at year’s end, if the company did well and the manager remembered. But under a new federal plan, a federal Immigration and an ICE agent could now receive a $40,000 bonus just for staying on the job.

That’s nearly 20 times the average year-end bonus of $2,503 received by American workers in 2024.

And it doesn’t stop there.

The same legislation proposes $45 billion to expand ICE’s detention and deportation budget by 2029, a 365% increase over current levels. The goal is to accelerate deportations and build more detention facilities.

Let’s break that down.

• ICE salary (for an experienced agent): $88,000 to $114,000

• Availability pay: Raises total to about $142,000

• New bonus: Add $40,000

• Private prison contracts to companies such as GEO Group and CoreCivic, which wants to reopen a detention facility in Leavenworth for ICE: more than $1 billion

And for individuals in the system?

• Cost to detain one person daily: Around $150

• Cost to monitor someone with electronic supervision daily: $4.07

That means the government is choosing to spend nearly 40 times more to imprison someone than to monitor them. From a taxpayer standpoint, that’s not fiscal responsibility. That’s a windfall — just not for the public.

So, who benefits?

Certainly not the taxpayer. The winners here are the private prison corporations, government contractors and politicians who campaign on fear and fundraise off the chaos they helped create

We’ve built a pipeline where the more people detained, the more money flows. That’s not about safety. It’s about profit.

Meanwhile, families in Kansas City and across the country are working two jobs to make ends meet, paying record prices for groceries and gas, and watching their kids grow up without affordable paths to homeownership or education.

Yet Congress can find $45 billion to lock up asylum seekers?

What we’re seeing isn’t governance. It’s a bounty-based business model, paid for by working Americans who are getting nothing in return.

This isn’t truly about border security. It’s about a system that financially rewards detention over due process. It’s about enriching those who profit from mass incarceration. And we should all be asking: at what cost?

We’ve lost sight of the real crisis.

We don’t solve problems. We budget for the chaos instead. The bigger the crisis looks on cable news, the bigger the payday behind the scenes.

Let’s be clear: No federal agent should receive a bonus larger than what the average American earns in a year. No detention policy should be driven by profit margins. And no political party should disguise fear-based economics as public safety.

Our government is meant to serve people, not contractors. If we can afford $45 billion to detain people, we can afford to invest in real solutions that keep families safe, communities whole, and our values intact.

This is not radical. It’s responsible.

And it’s time we say it plainly.

This story was originally published May 21, 2025 at 5:07 AM.