Wel­come to Inter­views for Resis­tance. Since elec­tion night 2016, the streets of the Unit­ed States have rung with resis­tance. Peo­ple all over the coun­try have wok­en up with the con­vic­tion that they must do some­thing to fight inequal­i­ty in all its forms. But many are won­der­ing what it is they can do. In this series, we’ll be talk­ing with expe­ri­enced orga­niz­ers, trou­ble­mak­ers, and thinkers who have been doing the hard work of fight­ing for a long time. They’ll be shar­ing their insights on what works, what does­n’t, and what has changed, and what is still the same.

The corporate partners financing this plan are just as responsible for the separation of our families.

José Lopez: I am José Lopez, one of the co-orga­niz­ing direc­tors at Make the Road New York.

Daniel Altschuler: My name is Daniel Altschuler. I am the direc­tor civic engage­ment and research at Make the Road New York.

Sarah Jaffe: We are talk­ing before an action that you at Make the Road are part of: a nation­al day of action on Wednes­day, August 2 around the involve­ment of par­tic­u­lar big banks in the pri­vate prison and immi­grant deten­tion indus­try. Can you tell us a lit­tle bit about the campaign?

José: We launched a web­site and a cam­paign a cou­ple of months ago called Cor­po­rate Back­ers of Hate. It is an attempt to name and shame a bunch of cor­po­ra­tions like JPMor­gan Chase and Wells Far­go for being com­plic­it and sup­port­ive of Trump’s anti-immi­grant agen­da. That has tak­en place in a num­ber of ways. It could come in the form of JPMor­gan donat­ing $500,000 to Trump’s inau­gur­al com­mit­tee. It could come in the form of the CEO Jamie Dimon sit­ting on the Trump busi­ness coun­cil. But tomorrow’s action is focused on JPMor­gan Chase financ­ing the debt of pri­vate prison and immi­grant deten­tion cen­ters under the cor­po­ra­tions GEO Group and CoreCivic.

What we want to high­light is that this admin­is­tra­tion and this White House can­not car­ry out its anti-immi­grant poli­cies on its own. The admin­is­tra­tion will be rely­ing on the work of pri­vate com­pa­nies like JPMor­gan Chase that can pro­vide the fund­ing, that can pro­vide the soft­ware and that can pro­vide some man­pow­er to real­ly ramp up depor­ta­tions and the build­ing of a bor­der wall. It is extreme­ly con­cern­ing to us. We want to be sure that every­one across the coun­try under­stands the roles of com­pa­nies like JPMor­gan Chase in advanc­ing bad pol­i­cy under the cur­rent administration.

Sarah: Tell us about the GEO Group and Core­Civic and JPMorgan’s con­nec­tions to them.

José: Right now, a ton of the financ­ing for the expan­sion of GEO Group and Core­Civic is com­ing from JPMor­gan Chase. GEO Group and Core­Civic cur­rent­ly are the country’s largest pri­vate prison and immi­grant deten­tion com­pa­nies. What we want to point out is that the financ­ing is com­ing from JPMor­gan Chase, and they are con­nect­ed to the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion in many ways.

It has every­thing to do with prof­it. We want to be sure that com­pa­nies like JPMor­gan Chase are not prof­it­ing off of the backs of immi­grant fam­i­lies and are not putting prof­its before a moral oblig­a­tion to keep fam­i­lies togeth­er, to keep moth­ers with their daugh­ters and their sons and their hus­bands and their loved ones.

There has been a ton of work over the last cou­ple of months. Some esca­la­tions and some arrests hap­pened a cou­ple of months ago in front of the JPMor­gan head­quar­ters. There was a share­hold­er meet­ing that took place in Delaware where hun­dreds of peo­ple marched on the share­hold­er meet­ing and a cou­ple went in to con­front Jamie Dimon. We just want to con­tin­ue the drum­beat of going after cor­po­ra­tions like JPMor­gan Chase that stand to prof­it off of the mis­ery and suf­fer­ing of our communities.

Sarah: Tell us a lit­tle bit about the research that you have been doing around immi­grant deten­tion and pri­vate pris­ons and their con­nec­tions to the Trump administration.

Daniel: Make the Road and the Cen­ter for Pop­u­lar Democ­ra­cy, with our part­ners, embarked on this project to look into the com­pa­nies that were most com­plic­it. There is a long body of research, and there have been orga­ni­za­tions around the coun­try that have been look­ing into this for some time. With com­pa­nies like JPMor­gan Chase, one of the things we found was that this was one of the com­pa­nies that is financ­ing the largest pri­vate prison and immi­grant deten­tion com­pa­nies like the GEO Group and Core­Civic, for­mer­ly the Cor­rec­tion Cor­po­ra­tion of Amer­i­ca. The way that that hap­pens is that JPMor­gan finances the debt of these com­pa­nies, so it enables these com­pa­nies to sus­tain their oper­a­tions and to expand.

Sarah: Pri­vate pris­ons are a rel­a­tive­ly small por­tion of the over­all prison sys­tem, but they play a real­ly big role in immi­grant deten­tion. I won­der if you could talk a lit­tle bit more about the way that these com­pa­nies prof­it off of an increased depor­ta­tion régime like Trump’s.

Daniel: Com­pa­nies like GEO Group and Core­Civic are com­pa­nies that take gov­ern­ment con­tracts. We just saw an enor­mous gov­ern­ment con­tract that was giv­en to one of these com­pa­nies ear­li­er this year, and it is very clear that Don­ald Trump and his admin­is­tra­tion are rely­ing on an expan­sion. They need more beds to do that. They are rely­ing on these pri­vate immi­grant deten­tion com­pa­nies in order to do that.

Com­pa­nies are mak­ing mon­ey in dif­fer­ent ways. First of all, they are get­ting con­tracts to run facil­i­ties. One of the things that hap­pens con­gres­sion­al­ly is there is some­thing called a ​“bed man­date.” Con­gress has passed a law so that there need to be 34,000 peo­ple fill­ing beds in immi­grant deten­tion facil­i­ties. We know that the Trump admin­is­tra­tion wants to ramp that up con­sid­er­ably. These com­pa­nies are get­ting con­tracts to help them achieve that goal and then make more mon­ey and help them meet their bot­tom line. What we are say­ing to JPMor­gan Chase and Wells Far­go is, ​“You can­not be in the busi­ness of financ­ing, or being in any way finan­cial­ly entan­gled, with these moral­ly odi­ous companies.”

Sarah: Is the Trump admin­is­tra­tion ramp­ing up the amount of time peo­ple are stay­ing in deten­tion? Are they try­ing to deport peo­ple faster? Is that chang­ing at all under this administration?

Daniel: We are see­ing a focus from the Trump admin­is­tra­tion in increas­ing arrests. We have seen an increase in ICE arrests, over 40 per­cent in the ear­ly months of this year. We have also seen an effort from the Trump admin­is­tra­tion to expe­dite cer­tain removals. They are try­ing to do away with due process for large groups of immi­grants, to ulti­mate­ly take steps towards a mass depor­ta­tion régime. That is part of what we are resist­ing, and we have stood up with allies across the coun­try against what the Trump admin­is­tra­tion is doing. We are now say­ing we are going to stand up to the cor­po­ra­tions that are coop­er­at­ing and com­plic­it in this.

Sarah: Talk a lit­tle bit about how Trump’s agen­da has been affect­ing the com­mu­ni­ties that Make the Road orga­nizes in. Tell us about what this is doing and how peo­ple are resolved to fight back.

José: There has been a height­ened fear in our com­mu­ni­ties and increased con­cern that the rhetoric is actu­al­ly com­ing to fruition. Already under Trump, more than 21,000 immi­grants have been detained and poten­tial­ly sep­a­rat­ed from their families.

A lot of what we have been doing is try­ing to play defense when it comes to the nation­al land­scape and mak­ing sure that we are work­ing to sup­port our com­mu­ni­ties through pol­i­cy and through advo­ca­cy. But also, we are cre­at­ing defense com­mit­tees. One of the big things that we have been doing orga­ni­za­tion­al­ly is mak­ing sure that com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers are equipped to build safe­ty net­works on their local blocks and in their local com­mu­ni­ties to have imme­di­ate forms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion if it is per­ceived that ICE is in the area attempt­ing to con­duct a raid.

While there has been this height­ened sense of fear, immi­grant com­mu­ni­ties at Make the Road and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions are doing a ton of work to real­ly build com­mu­ni­ties, cre­ate these defense com­mit­tees and come out and share their sto­ries. Com­ing out of the shad­ows and then launch­ing bold cam­paigns, like this Back­ers of Hate cam­paign, where they are mak­ing con­nec­tions to cor­po­rate part­ners and say­ing, ​“No.” Again, this admin­is­tra­tion can­not do it alone. The cor­po­rate part­ners financ­ing this plan are just as respon­si­ble for the sep­a­ra­tion of our fam­i­lies. We can no longer let them slide under the radar. There is a lot of work being done, but there is still a lot more to be done.

Sarah: How can peo­ple get involved in this cam­paign, in the defense com­mit­tees, in work to defend immi­grant com­mu­ni­ties wher­ev­er they are?

José: Wher­ev­er they are, folks should def­i­nite­ly look for local grass­roots orga­niz­ing groups that are doing strong work either at the local lev­el or at the state lev­el or at the nation­al lev­el. Folks should pro­vide sup­port to those orga­ni­za­tions, go meet with those orga­ni­za­tions, go talk to those orga­ni­za­tions. In New York, we have offices in Brook­lyn, Queens, Stat­en Island, and in Long Island. Folks should def­i­nite­ly vis­it our web­site: www​.maketheroad​ny​.org.

There are oth­er things you can do if you can’t get involved with an orga­ni­za­tion, don’t have the time or are not in close prox­im­i­ty to a group. Folks can vis­it the Back­ers of Hate web­site. On the web­site, we pro­file a num­ber of cor­po­ra­tions, not just JPMor­gan Chase, and their con­nec­tions to this admin­is­tra­tion and try­ing to advance an anti-immi­grant agenda.

When you vis­it the web­site, you can click on the link that says, ​“Give them hell,” and it will ask you for some basic infor­ma­tion like your name. Then it will allow you to write a let­ter that will allow you to reach the top exec­u­tive at each of the cor­po­ra­tions. You can write as lit­tle or as much as you would like about your sup­port for the immi­grant com­mu­ni­ty. Then, once you click ​“send” on that let­ter, the let­ter will auto­mat­i­cal­ly be sent to some of the top exec­u­tives for each of those corporations.

Inter­views for Resis­tance is a project of Sarah Jaffe, with assis­tance from Lau­ra Feuille­bois and sup­port from the Nation Insti­tute. It is also avail­able as a pod­cast on iTunes. Not to be reprint­ed with­out permission.