A Boom Behind Bars: Private Jail Operators Profit from Illegal Immigrant Crackdown

In CCA facilities for immigrant detention, inmates have become lost—sometimes fatally—in the ICE churn. CCA’s Eloy Detention Facility in Arizona had more deaths than any other immigration jail listed in a congressional report last year. In one case, a 62-year-old Ghanaian barber named Emmanuel Owusu spent two years in a CCA facility contesting his deportation from the U.S., and died there of diabetes-related heart problems. He had lived in the U.S. for 33 years. In internal documents, ICE employees wondered why he ever ended up in an ICE facility to begin with.

Source: Businessweek
Published: Mar 19, 2011
Length: 15 minutes (3,975 words)
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