G4S strikes again…..this time in the US | The Slog.

As the disgraceful mishandling of 2012 Olympics security becomes a distant memory on the horizon of Thatcherite naivety – as the saga of Care Home sleaze and fiddled invoices fades from full primary colours into pastel-shady deals – and as we begin to forget about how Theresa May was handing G4S business just as Chris Grayling was banning them from Government contracts in perpetuity….this soi-disant “security” company is engaged in compromising the one aim its US employer has: Homeland Security.

American Border Patrol whistleblowers have told US investigative website Judicial Watch that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is surreptitiously transporting illegal Mexican immigrants from the Mexican border to Phoenix…and then releasing them without proper processing or issuing court appearance documents.

Judicial Watch is a right-wing site with what one could call “good intentions”. It’s too Trumpy and kick-out wetbacks for my taste,  but the things that make this story credible  are (1) I’ve been on G4S’s case for five years in the UK, and this lulu bears all their hallmarks (2) the site’s sources mirror what others have told me about the mess the DHS is in, and (3) as the emerging nations are squeezed more and more by financially manipulated globalism, border meltdowns like these are inevitable…be they in France, Greece or Austria.

This shot was taken earlier this week by Judicial Watch at the Phoenix Greyhound bus station, on Buckeye Road….where unprocessed illegals then made their various ways forward. White unmarked vans arrived carrying a group of ‘lucky’ immigrants. G4S drove them from the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector where they were in custody to Phoenix.

The covert policy reflects recent Congressional testimony given by Bandon Judd, chief of the National Border Patrol Council –  the trade union that represents border guards. Judd told lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee that illegal immigrants without serious criminal convictions can be released immediately and disappear into the shadows. This was also confirmed by one law enforcement official in Arizona, who told Judicial Watch,  “They’re telling us to put them on a bus and let them go…Just move those bodies across the country.”

It would not, of course, occur to G4S to tell US legislators that the tide of immigrants is beyond their control….because that would threaten G4S’s gigantic fee for providing security that is clearly no longer viable. Three years ago in the UK – using information from  Open Democracy – I was able to show that  G4S made a planning application to convert a house into a children’s home, under the name of one Simon Herbert, to Buckinghamshire Council. A Statement in support of the application, purporting to come from ‘Childrens Services’, was sent to Aylesbury Vale District Council. In fact, both were issued by G4S. The forged document went on to say that ‘Both Local and National Planning Policy support the proposed change of use.’ G4S simply made this up.

A year before that, I catalogued how Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt were forced to call in the army to run UK Olympic Games security, after G4S were found to have provided 3,500 less staff than promised – most of them woefully unqualified – and then the staff were caught by media surveillance literally asleep on the job.

In March 2014, G4S were forced to give a hundred million Pounds in overcharged fees back to the Ministry of Justice….but then, a month later, Whitehall declared them free of blame.

The company is still as cosy as a bug in a rug – or a cockroach under the carpet – with the crooked incompetents of Whiteminster. It is still in charge of housing UK asylum seekers, although is now thankfully losing money on the three year old contract….because ‘the sheer number of asylum seekers now coming under the programme far exceeded original estimates made by G4S’. No change there then.

In January of 2016, yet again the Labour Party demanded that ‘Private jail firm G4S should be banned from getting new government deals after a probe allegedly revealed abuse at a youth prison’. A BBC Panorama exposé then went on to show undercover footage of youngsters being restrained at Medway Secure Training Centre – where one inmate was left struggling to breathe , and staff at the G4S-run jail slapped one teenager on the head and stabbed another in the leg with a fork. Seven staff members were later suspended from the centre in Kent.

I’m just giving you a flavour of this highly favoured government supplier, that just keeps on cheating, screwing up….then being cleared before being reappointed. I sincerely hope the US authorities will be less tolerant and forgiving.

However, my growing feeling over the five years of following G4S is that, shall we say, their marketing methods employ a judicious mixture of cronyism and money.

This sort of thing is meat and drink to Jeremy Hunt, a man whose own company Hotcourses was let off the hook and then covertly reappointed by his second cousin Baroness Nettlestone. That little act of nepotism went on to make his fortune…which remains on paper by the way, because when eighteen months ago a large combine offered £17m to buy Hotcourses, they began the due diligence….and then reversed out like an Italian tank on rocket fuel. Go figure, eh?

Hunt was involved in hiring G4S for the Olympics, and for defending them….at one point telling a committee it was “quite normal” for a government supplier to underperform. He really has no idea whatTF he is at. Mind you, Jeremy has no idea at all why he withheld emails from the BSkyB bid enquiry, had several meetings with James Murdoch in New York during 2007, blagged a seat ( as well as a BC contract) off his second-cousin, denied she was his second cousin, co-authored a pamphlet urging the destruction of the NHS, or wouldn’t meet the junior doctors for further talks until cornered into admitting that his weekend hospital death stats were invented garbage.

As for Boris….well, The Slog has a page dedicated to the Rake’s Progress. You can access it here. Suffice to say that he and Hunt have a close chum in common: Rupert Murdoch.

This is the real bottom line: Western governments are not facing border control realities, and as a result the topic is easy for racists to sensationalise. Neither syndrome is even remotely advisable. In the meantime, those governments are employing profiteering incompetents to not do the job. And in that context, nobody else on the planet comes close to G4S when it comes to corruptly engineered cock-ups.

Corruption connected at yesterday’s Slog: Dippy Daydream Morgan and educational cronyism

Like this:

LikeLoading...