Gates’ connection to the U.S. detention and deportation machine is a company called Signature Aviation. Signature calls itself “the world’s largest network of private aviation terminals,” and it’s a linchpin in the day-to-day machinery of Trump’s immigration enforcement apparatus.
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The private firm that holds Gates’ and the Gates Foundation Trust’s assets, Cascade Investment, increased its stake in the company to 30% in 2021, when it and two partners bought Signature outright for $4.7 billion. Human rights advocates — plane trackers and activists who keep tabs on deportation flights, as well as the aviation and logistics companies profiting from them — say Gates’ stake in Signature is at odds with his humanitarian work, including the Gates Foundation’s support of a plethora of immigration-focused nonprofits. Without FBOs like Signature, they say, Trump’s mass deportation agenda would be stuck on the ground.
Gates himself has not publicly commented on Signature Aviation’s crucial role in servicing ICE Air flights. Neither the Gates Foundation nor Cascade Asset Management Company, which oversees Cascade Investment, responded to multiple requests for comment.
The Gates Foundation paid for my town’s shiny new rural hospital, bringing in multiple MRI machines, a PET scanner, etc to make it one of the most advanced hospitals in the region.
But the hospital can’t afford to staff radiologists, so the machines are useless. Last year they sat around hemming and hawing for several hours while my husband was laying there with symptoms of a stroke, trying to decide whether it would be faster (let’s be real, the debate was cheaper) to call in a radiologist or transport him to another hospital (they ended up picking the latter).
This is why philanthropy is worse than just taxing and spending.
Huge sums of money from rich people going toward “charitable causes” can be have negative consequences. Ex.
Why is there no em-dash