‘Something I Said’ Archives
Who is the GEO Group?
from the series Something I Said... By DWIGHT HOBBES Dwight Hobbes President Trump’s order of the day continues to be bald faced corruption. He appointedformer GEO Group executive David Venturella to run ICE. A la one hand washing the other,GEO Group and subsidiaries donated just under $2 million to Trump’s 2024 campaign. GEOGroup, in fact, holds numerous government contracts for detention facilities and saw seriousprofit increases as the administration ramped up mass deportations. GEO was more than $250 million in the green for 2025, up almost 700% from 2024.They certainly aren’t spending that profit on justice advocates, journalists and investigatorsdocumented substandard ICE conditions. Added to which, their snout is deep in Trump’s trough.Half the corporation’s conflict of interest revenue is ICE contracts, a clear all for Trump's massdeportation agenda: it runs nearly two dozen detention facilities and provides transportationservices and electronic [...]
Damage Done
from the series Something I Said... By DWIGHT HOBBES Dwight Hobbes ICE, the curse that keeps on giving. Operation Metro Surge was ostensibly called off, though as of June, hundreds of agents stayed, keeping a lower profile than committing outright assault and cold blooded murder. The damage is still done. On top of lousing up immigrant lives, actually dragging people away from work and worse, ICE cost Minnesotans somewhere around 5,700 hospitality jobs and 4,400 construction jobs from December of last year to this February alone. This is verified by federal data. North Star Policy Action researcher Aaron Rosenthal told The Minnesota Reformer early estimates for the same period were $46 million and $106 million in lost wages across Minneapolis and St. Paul. This is not just about dollars and doesn’t make the first bit of common sense. Nor does Minnesota GOP lawmakers refusing state aid to compensate Minneapolis’ revenue losses. They cited DFL pro-immigrant policies for [...]
Here Comes the Hanging Judge
from the series Something I Said... By DWIGHT HOBBES Dwight Hobbes South Minneapolis activists raised pure hell confronting ICE’s jackbooted, might-makes-right assault on civil liberty. Ensuing national attention on Renee Good’s and Alex Pretti’s murders along with the brutalizing of Alberto Mondragon forced the withdrawal of Operation Metro Surge. In April, U.S. Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review got slick, doing an end run, appointing Nathan M. Hansen immigration judge at Fort Snelling Immigration Court. President Donald Trump’s ham-handed administration couldn’t defeat resistance one way, so it went another, in accord with the DOJ’s fast tracking deportations across the country. As an attorney, Hansen endorsed the harebrained notion of a Democratic higher-ups pedophilia ring operating out of a Washington, D.C. pizza parlor. There were no victims, any evidence, or an actual investigation. He declared property taxes are illegal [...]
