Unfit to Print: A HOT MESS
My favorite fake news pieces are the ones that include all kinds of accompanying charts and visuals.
Hey y’all, welcome to another special edition of Unfit to Print!
Today we’re doing a quick dive into the media’s latest fake ICE scandal…
A HOT MESS
My favorite fake news pieces are the ones that include all kinds of accompanying charts and visuals. It is fun to think about how much time it took a graphic designer to put together a webpage for an article that communicates nothing of value.
The Washington Post published one such article yesterday, headlined “ICE detainees face greater risk from extreme heat than most prisoners.”
That sounds awful. ICE facilities don’t have air conditioning? Detainees are getting heatstroke and dying?
Well, no, that’s actually not what WaPo is reporting at all.
Their analysis is based not on internal detention center temperatures but on the geographic location of ICE facilities.
WaPo’s report relies on classifying outdoor temperatures over a certain number as “dangerous” and then making assumptions about what that means for the inside of facilities. Of course, these estimates can be wildly inaccurate considering most, if not all, of facilities that have functioning air conditioning, fans, or other cooling devices installed.
But WaPo gets around making any specific claims by mentioning “worries” or “fears” or “concerns” of immigration and criminal justice reform activists. What they don’t mention is any report of a detainee actually having a medical issue due to heat.
The article further points out that ICE detention facilities are often located in the South and Southwest, so they are more likely to experience extreme heat when compared to your average prison. The insinuation is that detained immigrants are getting sweaty because our country is deliberately placing them in warm areas. “The cruelty is the point.”
Of course, the simpler explanation avoided by WaPo is that more detention facilities are in the South and Southwest because those regions are closer to the southern border — where most illegal crossings take place. It wouldn’t make much sense to have a bunch of ICE detention facilities in Kentucky, now would it?
“Prisons and detention centers are often built in areas that are ‘climatically worse’ or simply ‘undesirable’ places to live,” WaPo reports.
Well, they’re not meant to be “The White Lotus.”
The article further adds that there have been reports of AC units breaking in some detention facilities. That’s unfortunate and they should be fixed, but again, the implication is that these facilities don’t care about having working AC units because they want immigrants to suffer.
One of the companies that operates a detention facility where migrants complained about broken AC asserted that it has “a full-time HVAC technician, individual temporary air-conditioning units and temperature-reading devices” at all of their facilities. I can tell you from experience that’s better than most “luxury” apartments in Northern Virginia that have one maintenance guy on call for a half-dozen complexes.
WaPo also reports, “A DHS advisory council’s report on private immigration detention centers in 2016 found that detainees at every investigated facility complained about heat and cooling.”
Spoiler alert: if you’ve ever worked in an office building before, you’ve probably heard your coworkers complain about the temperature every day too.
In fact, we haven’t had a working elevator in our office for about six months. A pro-Amber Duke activist might argue I am at risk of a severe cardiovascular incident from having to walk up five flights of stairs multiple times a day. An anti-Amber Duke activist might retort that I could use the exercise. True, but where is my Washington Post investigation?!
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I love reading your articles!