Marvin Corado believed he would be happy once he was free. “As we were before,” He said on the eve of being released from detention at the Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach, Florida in 2012. “A family that none of these obstacles could separate.” The obstacles mentioned by Corado were related to the ordeal that he, his wife, and daughter lived since they arrived to the U.S. looking for a job and stability, 16 years ago. The Corado family never saw their dream come to fruition. “The husband who left my house one day to go to work did not return (…). I don’t know, I don’t know what has happened, but my life hasn’t been the same since he had to enter the immigration facility, unfortunately,” said his wife Leslie. For three and a half years the team from Univision Investiga followed the footsteps of this 32-year-old immigrant from Guatemala in an attempt to understand the breadth of the legal and illegal deals that have hovered around his drama, starting from the day his father mortgaged their house to pay the human trafficker that brought him to the United States, and ending with the final payment to an immigration lawyer in Miami. Marvin’s stay at this detention center for immigrants meant that on average revenues upwards of 20,000 dollars went to GEO Group, the company that owns that center. During the year that Marvin was detained GEO Group received an average of 166 dollars per detainee every night a figure that today has gone up to 193 dollars. “Immigration is a very lucrative business for investors, stockholders...
