The Miserable Plight of Immigrants in For-Profit Detention Centers | The Media Freedom Foundation

15.3.13

The Miserable Plight of Immigrants in For-Profit Detention Centers | The Media Freedom Foundation: Big corporations are making billions by incarcerating illegal immigrants. More than two-thirds of immigrants currently being detained in the United States are held in so-called contract facilities owned by private companies. Most of those brought before the court have no legal representation and are railroaded through the system. They do not have adequate health care. Many of these detainees are single parents with small children at home. These children lose their only parent and are placed in foster homes. One such detainee was Evelyn Obey, a 40 year old, Guatemalan single mother of a 12-year-old and a 6-year-old who was picked up in an immigration raid in Newark, N.J. The children never saw their mother again. Obey died in jail in 2010 from, according to the sign hung on her neck, “pulmonary thromboembolism, chronic bronchiolitis and emphysema and remote cardiac Ischemic Damage.”