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While the US Government is gradually reducing the number of inmates held at its notorious Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba, it is quietly maintaining an extensive shadow prison system here on US soil to detain tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants in deplorable conditions.

A new report by the ACLU which has been four years in the making has found that so-called “Criminal Alien Requirement” or CAR prisons run by private companies are seriously overcrowded, have squalid conditions with prisoners suffering and dying from medical neglect.

Although the ACLU’s investigation was based on hundreds of interviews and legally obtained documents from five CAR prisons in Texas, across the country there are 13 CAR prisons run by three private companies: CCA or Corrections Corporation of America, GEO Group and MTC or Management and Training Corporation.

While these prisons hold more than 25,000 undocumented immigrants or about 13% of the overall federal prison population, there is minimal federal oversight from the Bureau of Prisons.

GUEST: Adriana Piñon, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU of Texas