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Monday, September 19, 2011

Lost, Abused And Neglected For A Profit

Guillermo Gomez-Sanchez is a 50-year-old legal resident with a mental disability. In 2004, Gomez was detained because of a dispute at a grocery store over a bag of tomatoes. His detention led him into a labyrinth of abuse and neglect – in an immigration system that increasingly puts profit over justice by handing the reigns to private prison corporations.

Cuéntame’s Immigrants For Sale campaign has documented the case of Guillermo, who got lost in this system, while his mother Dolores Gomez-Sanchez spent years desperately searching for answers. The problem: Guillermo was sent to a private detention facility operated by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). Dolores approached immigration authorities, but time and again was told that because Guillermo was in a CCA facility his case was no longer their problem. At one point the only information immigration officials could offer her was that Guillermo was beaten by guards and hospitalized after requesting to use a bathroom.



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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cool. It's working now, thanks.

Anonymous said...

Wow. I have heard horror stories before about CCA.

Prisons have been a booming business for decades. They don't care about what's right or wrong or the law.

Their only concern is money, as this case illustrates.

This 'free' country has more people locked up than any other country in the world.

And I suspect no one cares...until it happens to them.