CHICAGO — Puerto Rico is sending hundreds of drug addicts to unlicensed drug treatment centers in Chicago — where many of them end up homeless and with no way home, a WBEZ/This American Life report revealed.
Back of the Yards journalist Adriana Cardona-Maguigad discovered this shocking story by talking to homeless men in the area, who said they were given a one-way ticket to Chicago and promised drug rehabilitation in high-quality facilities. Instead, she reports, they were taken to rundown buildings with no trained medical staff and no rehabilitation licensing from the state.
Though Cardona-Maguigad could not get a straight answer from Puerto Rican officials, she did find that the Puerto Rican municipality of Juncos alone sent 259 users to U.S. cities from 2007 to 2013. Fifty six percent of them came to Chicago, mostly ending up in Humboldt Park or Back of the Yards.
