A joint exposé by ProPublica and the New York Times reveals that elite consulting company McKinsey & Company made shocking and inhumane recommendations to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). From the story:
…the money-saving recommendations the consultants came up with made some career ICE workers uncomfortable. They proposed cuts in spending on food for migrants, as well as on medical care and supervision of detainees, according to interviews with people who worked on the project for both ICE and McKinsey and 1,500 pages of documents obtained from the agency after ProPublica filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act.
McKinsey’s team also looked for ways to accelerate the deportation process, provoking worries among some ICE staff members that the recommendations risked short-circuiting due-process protections for migrants fighting removal from the United States. The consultants, three people who worked on the project said, seemed focused solely on cutting costs and speeding up deportations — actions whose success could be measured in numbers — with little acknowledgment that these policies affected thousands of human beings.
According to Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America’s Voice:
The McKinsey tagline is ‘change that matters.’ The company prominently touts its ‘social responsibility’ on its homepage. Meanwhile, a McKinsey team recommended cutting food, reducing medical care and gutting due process in order to aid and abet Trump’s cruel deportation, detention and deterrence strategy.
McKinsey has some explaining to do.
They might want to notice that, just recently, a host of banks have pulled out of funding the private detention industry after activists and media coverage have exposed the ties. And groups such as Mijente, the National Immigration Project and the Immigration Defense Project are at the forefront of an ongoing effort to hold big tech companies like Palantir responsible for fueling the current deportation crisis by accelerating arrests, detentions and deportations.
The message is clear: Cashing in on cruelty is wrong. Those corporations and brands that choose to place profits above all should be prepared for the harsh spotlight and real accountability.
