Atrocious Living Conditions, Mental and Sexual Abuse, and Wrongful Deaths Associated with the GEO Group

Santa Ana, CA – Following newspaper reports by the Orange County Register, former State Senator Lou Correa slams Congressional candidate Bao Nguyen for inviting disgraced jail operator GEO Group into Garden Grove.

On June 23 2015, Mayor Bao Nguyen gave $1.6 million to the GEO Group to run the city’s jail. That same day, 35 leading Democrats in the U.S. House Of Representatives, including Latino leader Rep. Raül Grijalva and civil rights activist Rep. John Lewis, wrote the Department of Homeland Security expressing grave concern for the deplorable treatment and sexual abuse of LBGT detainees by the GEO Group in its ICE detainee facilities.

The GEO Group has been under investigation almost continually since 2001, resulting in over $42 million in fines and damages.

“As a member of both the LBGT and immigrant community, Bao’s willingness to work with GEO is unforgivable. The very fact that leading Democrats saw fit to write the Department of Homeland Security the same day as the Garden Grove vote, shows how out of touch Mayor Nguyen is. Either he cannot be trusted to research a critical vote, or worse, he did and did not care about what he found,” Correa stated.

“While Democrats were standing together to fight against the GEO Group, Mayor Bao Nguyen invited them into his city. If he is willing to sellout his own city, there is no telling what he will do to his constituents in Congress,” Correa added.

The GEO Group is the second largest private prison corporation in the United States and is one of the largest operators of the notorious ICE Detention facilities, responsible for atrocious living conditions, splitting up families, and mentally and sexually abusing LBGT detainees. They run 96 facilities and have been plagued with dozens of accusations of abusive employees, medical negligence, and numerous wrongful death lawsuits over the past 15 years.

To read the full article published by the Orange County Register, click here.

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Paid for by Lou Correa for Congress 2016.