Immigrant Detainees Sue Private Prison for Paying Them $1 Per Day for Forced Labor

By Esther Yu-Hsi Lee, ThinkProgress

11 July 15

ine current and former immigrant detainees are allowed to file a lawsuit against a private prison contractor that paid them $1 a day for forced labor at a Colorado detention center, a court ruled this week.

The complaint charged that the contractor GEO Group, a privately-owned prison operator, randomly picked six detainees and forced them to clean rooms at the Aurora Detention Facility, where they were housed by “threatening to put those who refused to work (for no pay) in ‘the hole,'” or solitary confinement. Under GEO’s “Detainee Voluntary Work Program,” plaintiffs allegedly scrubbed bathrooms, showers, toilets, and windows, and did laundry in the medical facility. They also prepared and served detainee meals for law enforcement events sponsored by GEO, performed clerical work for GEO, prepared clothing for newly arriving detainees, provided barber services to detainees, and ran the facility’s law library.

For all that labor, they were either paid $1 a day, or nothing at all.

The complaint argues that GEO violated Colorado’s Minimum Wage Law, which requires that employers pay employees at least the minimum wage for each hour worked. As of January 2015, that amounts to $8.23 an hour in Colorado. The federal Voluntary Work Program’s pay rate of $1 was set in 1950 and has not been adjusted since.

“Using forced detainee labor is an integral tool in maintaining GEO’s profitability under its contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),” Andrew Free, a Nashville-based immigrants’ rights attorney, said in a statement. “GEO’s business model at these ICE facilities is to boost corporate profits by violating the law. The court’s decision today represents an important step forward in ending that morally bankrupt business model.”

In response to a request from the Colorado alternative newspaper Westword, the GEO Group corporate headquarters said that the volunteer work program wage rates are set by the federal government. “GEO’s facilities, including the Aurora, Colo., facility, provide high quality services in safe, secure, and humane residential environments, and our company strongly refutes allegations to the contrary,” the statement continued.

Still, GEO profits off of immigrant detainees in other ways. The GEO Group reported $1.52 billion in total revenues in 2013. Both the GEO Group and another private prison firm, Corrections Corporation of America, bankrolls on immigrant detention: Their share prices sharply rose last year after a surge of unaccompanied Central American children crossed the southern U.S. border. During a quarterly investor call last August, GEO executives were optimistic that the migrant crisis would increase the company’s bottom line. And a new 400-bed, minimum-security detention center in Central California will likely generate $17 million in annualized revenues for the GEO group.

But none of GEO’s profits seemed to have trickled down to care for the detainees. Immigrants have long complained about issues at GEO Group-owned facilities. Last year, hundreds of detainees went on a hunger strike at the GEO Group-owned, 1,575-bed Northwest Detention Center, stating that there was “bad food, substandard medical care, high commissary prices and lack of access to fair and timely court hearings,” the Seattle Globalist wrote.

Still, the “voluntary” work program kept at least 60,000 immigrants working for $1 a day or less at detention centers, either at private prison-operated or at federal immigration facilities nationwide.