The ad follows a POLITICO report detailing Gov. Bruce Rauner’s financial ties to Correct Care Solutions. | Brian Hill/Daily Herald via AP ‘Dishonest and shameful’ ad roils Illinois governor’s race

CHICAGO — A company that provides health services to immigrant detention centers is rebutting a claim in an incendiary new ad that accuses it and Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner of profiting off family separations.

The ad, which Rauner has called “ dishonest and shameful ,” contends that the company, Correct Care Solutions, has been “paid millions to help keep children separated from their parents” at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers.


Rauner’s November opponent, Democrat J.B. Pritzker, began airing the spot this week. It follows a POLITICO report detailing Rauner’s financial ties to Correct Care Solutions, which provides health care services inside of correctional facilities, including family detention centers.

“We’re not a corrections company. We’re not separating anybody,” Correct Care Solutions spokeswoman Judy Lilley said Friday. “Until you are inside one of these — it’s truly like an urgent care center. We take care of patients. That’s what we do.”

Since fiscal year 2017, Correct Care Solutions has reported $1 billion in annual revenue from government contracts, Lilley said. Correct Care is among the for-profit contractors that have seen their revenues soar under the Trump administration’s controversial immigration policies.

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The POLITICO story detailed Rauner’s economic statements, which reported a profit from a private equity fund that is an owner of Correct Care. The firm itself has been the source of controversy, facing dozens of lawsuits alleging wide-ranging negligence.

But the Pritzker ad steps beyond the POLITICO report and asserts that the company helped further a family separations policy.

Lilley said Correct Care does not do work in centers holding children separated from their parents. She said the firm wouldn’t know one way or another whether they provide services to the parents of those children.

Rauner has condemned the ad and called for it to be pulled.

“Gov. Rauner has been clear from the beginning he opposes family separation,” Rauner campaign spokesman Will Allison said Friday. “It’s shameful that Pritzker continues to make these false claims despite media around the state highlighting his dishonesty.”

But Pritzker contends that the Republican governor, through his ties to Correct Care, is on the hook for furthering the family separations policy.

"The fact is, while bipartisan governors spoke out against their states supporting Donald Trump’s family separation policy, Bruce Rauner refused to say he wouldn’t send Illinois national guard troops to the border if asked, instead saying he hadn’t given it ‘any thought whatsoever,’” Pritzker spokeswoman Galia Slayen said in a statement. “And the fact is that Bruce Rauner is an owner of a company that profits off helping keep children separated from their families through their work to keep ICE detention centers operational.”

Immigrant rights groups criticized the financial ties between a sitting governor and a for-profit ICE detention contractor, with one calling it a clear conflict of interest and urging Rauner, a multimillionaire, to divest. Rauner’s campaign has said it won’t divest and that the governor placed his finances in the hands of a third party and follows “blind trust procedures.”

