Video: When Your Mother Is Deported

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In a Texan business park named Export Plaza, the Corrections Corporation of America operates a complex of concrete buildings where illegal immigrants are locked up until they agree to leave the country.

“When you first get there, they tell you you’re nobody,” says Sergia Santibanez, who spent 18 months inside CCA’s Houston Processing Center while she fought to remain in the United States with her children.

Watch her daughter, Luisanna, speak about her mother’s detention here:

—Stokely Baksh and Renee Feltz

For more on the business of detention, don’t miss MoJo reporter Stephanie Mencimer‘s article, Why Texas Still Holds ‘Em. For more multimedia coverage of this issue by investigative reporters Renee Feltz and Stokely Baksh, go to www.businessofdetention.com.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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