Passport to Cruelty

Ryan Haylett

Why is it that we treat a little blue booklet—a U.S. passport—like it's Willy Wonka's golden ticket to the chocolate factory, and everybody else waiting outside might as well be covered in dirt and eating shit? We've built this entire mythology around the idea that holding the right paperwork makes you "one of the good ones," while not having it means you’re probably up to something nefarious. It’s like, congratulations, you’ve been sorted into the club, now please watch as everyone else gets booted into the mud.

Ryan Haylett

Let’s just run through how tightly, and how cruelly, this system is rigged. The U.S. immigration and passport machine? We’re talking layers on layers. You got employment-based visas, family-based ones, all sorts of temporary statuses—refugee lottery, you name it. Then you have this whole biometric entry-exit surveillance lattice plastered across every official checkpoint. The pitch to the public is always about security, fairness ... but, come on, the reality? It’s about drawing a line between “us” and “them”—and making damn sure that line stays clear no matter what it costs.

Ryan Haylett

The passport isn’t just a travel document, it’s a weaponized marker of belonging. It’s our tool for hoarding opportunity while assigning the rest of the world, especially poor folks from exploited nations, to the trash pile.

Ryan Haylett

And don’t fall for the idea that the system’s failing, like it just needs a good tune up. If you get nothing else from this, remember: U.S. immigration enforcement isn’t “broken”—it absolutely works as designed. The pain, the fear, the humiliation? That’s not a side effect, it’s the point. The cruelty is the feature, not the bug.

Ryan Haylett

When you look at how people are actually treated—from “random” delays at the border that always seem to snag the same kinds of faces, to the intentional hurdles and gotchas built into the process—it’s all about keeping power in the hands of those who have it, and making its brutality invisible to everyone else. Most Americans can go their whole life never seeing detention centers, or realizing there’s an entire subculture of cruelty propping up the border regime. Out of sight, out of mind, right? Well, not here. We’re dragging it out into the light.

Ryan Haylett

The thing is, cruelty on its own doesn’t explain the whole story. If it was just about being mean, maybe you could chalk it up to bad policy or trigger-happy border agents. But step back and look closer—every piece of this system has a price tag. The checkpoints, the raids, the detention centers, even the ankle monitors—it’s all money changing hands. We’re not just dealing with a border regime that punishes people because it can; we’re dealing with an industry that profits more the worse it treats them.

Ryan Haylett

Take the foundation of cruelty, then slap a profit motive on top, and you’ve got the immigration industrial complex. Private prison giants like GEO Group and CoreCivic cash checks every single day a human being sits in a cell. For them, the border isn’t a humanitarian crisis—it’s a business plan. More raids, more detentions, more misery means more revenue. It’s supply and demand, except the “supply” is human suffering.

Ryan Haylett

It’s not just theory—there are receipts. The U.S. government spends over $3 billion a year on immigration detention, and the vast majority of that is contracted out to private companies. The two biggest players, together control roughly 70–80% of all private detention beds in the country. In 2022 alone, GEO Group pulled in $2.3 billion in revenue, while CoreCivic brought in nearly $2 billion—much of it directly tied to federal immigration contracts. And they’re not alone. Airlines like Omni Air International make money deporting people. Electronic monitoring companies cash in on ankle bracelets and surveillance software. Even food and medical subcontractors profit by cutting corners inside detention centers.

Ryan Haylett

What does that mean? It means human misery has a line item on a balance sheet. Every night someone is locked in a cell, that’s another paycheck. Every deportation flight booked is another contract fulfilled. The cruelty isn’t free—it’s monetized. This isn’t a broken system; it’s an economy.

Ryan Haylett

And once you’re inside these detention centers, the mask comes off fast. Conditions are deliberately degrading. People crammed into freezing rooms, lights left on 24/7, denied basic healthcare. Congress gets a sanitized tour once in a while, but the photos and testimonies that slip through tell the truth. This is not about keeping anyone “safe.” It’s about breaking people down.

Ryan Haylett

The culture of abuse is baked in. Studies have shown that over one in ten deported migrants report physical abuse during detention or deportation. Almost a quarter report being threatened, cursed at, or targeted with racial slurs. That’s not a handful of rogue agents; that’s a pattern. If cruelty shows up this consistently across the entire system, then cruelty is the system.

Ryan Haylett

And it doesn’t stop at the body—it extends to identity itself. Nearly a third of deported migrants lose their personal belongings: IDs, phones, wallets, cash. Imagine being dumped in a border city at night with no papers, no money, no way to prove who you are. That’s not a clerical error. That’s a deliberate stripping away of dignity and security. It’s a second punishment, designed to keep people disoriented and vulnerable.

Ryan Haylett

Even when migrants try to “play by the rules,” the system is stacked against them. U.S. asylum law is a maze: applicants have to prove “credible fear” of persecution, but they’re expected to do so without legal counsel, often while detained, sometimes within 72 hours of arrival. More than half don’t have access to an attorney at any point. Judges are overburdened, dockets are backlogged by hundreds of thousands of cases, and outcomes vary wildly depending on which court you land in. One study found asylum grant rates swinging from 5% in some jurisdictions to over 70% in others. Justice by zip code.

Ryan Haylett

And if you lose? Deportation often means being dumped into dangerous border cities at night, sometimes with no documents, no money, no family. For many, “removal” is essentially a death sentence. The law frames it as orderly process. On the ground, it’s legalized abandonment.

Ryan Haylett

Here’s the part the bureaucracy never admits: every single stage of the process—from the ICE raid at 5 a.m., to the detention center, to the “voluntary” return flight—is structured for maximum dehumanization. And each layer has a contractor, a vendor, a lobbyist getting paid. Even ankle monitors and electronic tracking devices are billion-dollar industries. It’s not an accident; it’s an economy.

Ryan Haylett

And then we get the lazy cable-news framing: “illegal immigrants”—are they escaping violence, or dodging paperwork? That framing misses the point entirely. Violence and paperwork are not separate issues—they’re both manufactured. The violence comes from decades of U.S. foreign policy, and the paperwork is the weapon we use to decide whose suffering matters. Passports open doors for some, slam them shut for others. And the architecture of the entire system is racialized by design.

Ryan Haylett

In the last few years, Republican governors have turned immigration into performance art. Governors like Greg Abbott in Texas and Ron DeSantis in Florida started busing and even flying migrants thousands of miles to so-called “liberal strongholds” like New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. The pitch to their base is simple: make the problem visible, dump people where it will cause political headaches, and then gloat about it on Fox News. It’s cruelty as campaign strategy.

Ryan Haylett

The numbers are in the tens of thousands—buses rolling into Port Authority in Manhattan at all hours, planes landing unannounced in Martha’s Vineyard. The migrants themselves are often misled, told they’re headed somewhere with jobs or services, only to be dropped in crowded cities with little preparation. For Republican politicians, the chaos is the point. They want viral clips of mayors scrambling, headlines about shelter systems breaking down, and images that reinforce the narrative of “invasion.”

Ryan Haylett

What gets lost is that these are real families—people already brutalized by the system—being used as political props. The strategy doesn’t solve anything. It doesn’t make the border more “secure.” What it does is weaponize human beings to score points in the culture war, while leaving cities to scramble with the fallout.

Ryan Haylett

This is why calling immigration “broken” is the biggest lie of all. Broken implies it failed at its job. But look closer. The raids, the abuse, the theft, the endless limbo—they all serve the same purpose: punish the powerless, protect the connected, and turn suffering into cash. That’s not failure. That’s success—just not for the people paying the price.

Ryan Haylett

Now here’s the part nobody wants to face: people don’t just wake up and say, “Hey, let’s walk a thousand miles for fun.” They’re running from the fires we set. U.S. foreign policy in Latin America is basically a demolition derby. Invade, coup, exploit, repeat: we roll in, wreck the place, install a puppet, and then act shocked when survivors show up at our doorstep. And every time, when the smoke clears, the people left behind have little choice but to head north.

Ryan Haylett

Let’s name names...

Ryan Haylett

Guatemala, 1954... President Jacobo Árbenz tries land reform—redistributing unused acreage from United Fruit Company, the U.S. banana monopoly that basically owned half the country. The CIA swoops in, topples Árbenz, and installs a military regime. What follows? A 36-year civil war. Death squads, torture, massacres. Over 200,000 people killed, mostly Indigenous Maya. And yes—waves of refugees started heading north, straight into the “illegal” label we invented for them.

Ryan Haylett

El Salvador, 1980s... The U.S. pours billions into propping up a right-wing government fighting leftist guerrillas. We’re talking helicopter gunships, weapons, advisors—all backed by Washington. The military and death squads committed atrocities, including the El Mozote massacre, where nearly 1,000 civilians were slaughtered. Whole villages wiped off the map. Survivors fled, many ending up in Los Angeles, only to be criminalized here.

Ryan Haylett

Honduras, 2009... President Manuel Zelaya pushes for modest reforms—raising the minimum wage, easing poverty. The Honduran elite didn’t like it. A military coup removes him, with tacit U.S. approval. What follows? Political chaos, corruption, gang violence. Honduras becomes one of the most dangerous countries in the world. Families leave in caravans. Instead of welcoming them, we build bigger cages.

Ryan Haylett

Nicaragua, 1980s...

Ryan Haylett

After the Sandinista revolution overthrew a U.S.-backed dictator, Washington decided that was unacceptable. Enter the Contras, a U.S.-funded rebel force notorious for terrorism, assassinations, and drug trafficking. Congress even had to pass the Boland Amendment to stop funding them, which Reagan’s White House ignored. Result: thousands killed, an economy destroyed, a migration crisis that spilled directly toward the U.S.

Ryan Haylett

...Ecuador, 2000s (and before)...

Ryan Haylett

Let’s not forget the oil companies. Texaco (later Chevron) operated in the Amazon for decades, leaving behind one of the largest environmental disasters in history—billions of gallons of toxic waste dumped into rivers and forests, poisoning Indigenous communities. Cancer rates skyrocketed, farmland was ruined, and whole communities were displaced. On top of that, U.S.-backed neoliberal policies in the 2000s forced Ecuador to slash social programs and open its markets to foreign corporations. Migration wasn’t an accident—it was the fallout of environmental devastation and economic sabotage.

Ryan Haylett

...Haiti, multiple times...

Ryan Haylett

The U.S. occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934, rewrote its constitution to allow foreign ownership of land, and backed dictators like “Papa Doc” and “Baby Doc” Duvalier for decades. In the 1990s and 2000s, the U.S. helped orchestrate coups against elected leaders like Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Every time Haiti tries self-determination, we pull the rug out. And then when Haitians flee poverty and instability, we intercept their boats and send them back.

Ryan Haylett

...Mexico... 1990s...

Ryan Haylett

NAFTA, signed in 1994, flooded Mexico with cheap, subsidized U.S. corn. Local farmers couldn’t compete. Millions were forced off their land and into poverty. Many crossed the border looking for work—the same border we militarized at the exact same time. We created the push and then criminalized the pull.

Ryan Haylett

And while Latin America is the most obvious case study, the U.S. isn’t limiting its imperial reach to the Western Hemisphere. Look at the Middle East: the invasion of Iraq in 2003 displaced millions, creating one of the largest refugee crises of the 21st century. U.S. drone wars in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia have shredded communities, driving civilians to flee. In Afghanistan, after twenty years of occupation and a chaotic exit, hundreds of thousands of Afghans scrambled for asylum, many ending up in legal limbo.

Ryan Haylett

Even Africa isn’t untouched. U.S.-backed counterterrorism operations in places like Libya and the Sahel region have fueled instability, creating displacement on a massive scale. Add climate change—driven largely by industrialized nations like the U.S.—and you have another push factor that turns droughts, floods, and food shortages into migration waves.

Ryan Haylett

So when we talk about borders and passports, we’re not just talking about Mexico or Guatemala. We’re talking about a global system where U.S. interventions light fires, and then the same U.S. locks the exits when the flames spread.

Ryan Haylett

And then we have the gall to say, “Why can’t they fix their own countries?” Because every time they try, we break it. We topple leaders, fund death squads, rewrite their economies to serve our corporations.

Ryan Haylett

Here’s the bottom line: when people flee these countries, they’re not “stealing opportunity.” They’re following the trail of destruction left by U.S. policy, U.S. corporations, and U.S. weaponry. So when families cross deserts, climb fences, or risk drowning in the Rio Grande, the question isn’t “Why are they coming?” It’s “Why wouldn’t they?”. If justice meant anything, they’d have automatic entry. Call it reparations, call it accountability, call it common sense.

Ryan Haylett

And don’t think the cruelty stopped at the Cold War. Today’s “deterrence” policies—family separation, child cages, mass deportations, Alligator Aushwitz—are just new branding on the same imperial playbook. We light the fire, then criminalize people for running out of the burning house. That’s not law and order. That’s generational theft with barbed wire around it.

Ryan Haylett

We’re not just bystanders—we are the arsonists. They are running from the fire. And instead of opening the door, we build higher fences, hire more guards, and pretend their suffering has nothing to do with us. That’s not law and order. That’s imperialism with better branding.