The Corruption We Normalised: When Ankle Monitors Become a Business Model
Scrolling through the news this morning, I came across something that made me put down my latte and stare at the screen for a good minute. ICE is planning to track over 180,000 immigrants with ankle monitors, and - surprise, surprise - the company making these devices donated at least $1.5 million to Trump. It’s the kind of story that perfectly encapsulates everything that’s gone wrong with how we do politics these days.
What really gets under my skin isn’t just the obvious corruption - though that’s infuriating enough - it’s how brazenly open it all is now. We’ve reached a point where a company can essentially buy government contracts through political donations, and we all just shrug because, well, it’s technically legal. Thanks, Citizens United.
Reading through the discussions about this, one comment really stuck with me: “At least have the decency to try to hide it.” That’s where we are now - we’re not even pretending anymore. The mask has come off completely, and we’re operating in broad daylight with a level of corruption that would make the robber barons of the early 1900s blush.
The historical parallels are impossible to ignore. Someone mentioned how at least the Gilded Age oligarchs felt some sense of noblesse oblige - they built libraries, museums, schools. What silver lining can we find with today’s billionaires? They’re happy to profit from human misery while contributing nothing meaningful back to society. It’s extraction all the way down.
What particularly bothers me is the sheer cheapness of it all. $1.5 million? That’s what it costs to buy influence over immigration policy that affects hundreds of thousands of people? If we’re going to live in a corrupt system, at least make the bribes expensive enough to suggest some dignity in the process. But no - our politicians are apparently available for the price of a decent Melbourne house.
The ankle monitor angle adds another layer of dystopian absurdity. These aren’t even people who’ve been convicted of crimes - many are asylum seekers going through the legal process. Yet they’ll be tagged like livestock, generating monthly revenue for a company that bought its way into this lucrative arrangement. It’s corporate welfare dressed up as border security, and the taxpayers foot the bill.
Living here in Australia, watching American politics unfold is like watching a slow-motion car crash. Our system certainly isn’t perfect - we’ve got our own issues with corporate influence and political donations - but at least we haven’t completely abandoned the pretense that government should serve the public interest rather than private profit.
The most depressing part is how normalised this has all become. Citizens United didn’t just legalise corruption; it made it so commonplace that we barely register it anymore. When everything is corrupt, nothing is corrupt, right? It’s like boiling a frog - the temperature’s been rising so gradually that we’ve lost the ability to recognise when things have gone completely off the rails.
But here’s what gives me some hope: people are noticing. The conversations I’m seeing aren’t just about this specific contract, but about the broader system that makes it possible. There’s growing awareness that we can’t address issues like immigration, healthcare, or climate change while our political system is essentially a marketplace where policy goes to the highest bidder.
Maybe that’s where change starts - with recognition that the problem isn’t just Trump or this particular administration, but a fundamental corruption of democratic processes that allows money to speak louder than votes. Once enough people understand that, perhaps we can start having serious conversations about reform.
Until then, we’ll keep watching companies profit from human suffering while calling it public policy. And somewhere in Colorado, the executives at GEO Group are probably already planning their next round of political donations, secure in the knowledge that their investment will pay dividends for years to come.
The system is working exactly as designed - just not for the people it’s supposed to serve.