Suit Alleging Private Prison Company Used Ice Detainees As “Captive Labor Force” Goes Forward
December 11th 2019
Abolish ICE Protest (Master Steve Rapport)
By Gabe Ortiz
A federal judge has said that a lawsuit alleging that a private prison company has for years used detained immigrants as “a readily available, captive labor force” may go forward as a national class action, Mother Jones reports. Asylum-seeker Karim and three co-plaintiffs say that GEO Group forced detainees in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody to perform “a wide range of completely uncompensated work” that went far beyond bed-making and tidying—and those who protested were disciplined with punishment that included pepper spray and solitary confinement, which is torture.
“The detainees argue that GEO is violating the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which prohibits forced labor,” Mother Jones writes. “If the detainees can convince a judge or jury that GEO’s sanitation policies have broken the law, they hope the company will be ordered to start paying detainees for their labor.” It’s not like GEO Group is hurting for money under the Trump administration, which in 2017 reversed an Obama administration move cutting back the use of private prisons. “In fiscal year 2019, the company received ICE contract revenue exceeding $320 million—about double the maximum it received during the Obama administration in 2015,” The Daily Beast reported last month.
$320 million in one year, yet detainees at the notorious Adelanto Detention Center prison in California said they were paid as little as $1 a day to work in a “voluntary” work program that wasn’t so voluntary. Reports Mother Jones, “The program is ‘not voluntary in any meaningful sense,’ the detainees argue, because working is the only way to pay for food, water, hygiene products, and other basic necessities they claim GEO withholds under a ‘deprivation policy.’ And they aren’t aren’t always paid for their work.” A surprise inspection uncovered serious—and horrific—violations at the facility last year, including nooses hanging in detainee cells and falsified medical reports.
“ICE has not taken seriously the recurring problem of detainees hanging bedsheet nooses at the Adelanto Center; this deficiency violates ICE standards,” the Department of Homeland Security inspector general said in a report following the surprise visit. “According to the guard escorting us, the nooses are a daily issue and very widespread. When we asked two contract guards who oversaw the housing units why they did not remove the bed sheets, they echoed it was not a high priority.” Not a high priority, despite a man dying by hanging at Adelanto in 2017.
GEO Group isn’t the only private prison profiteer to face similar allegations. Last year, CoreCivic was also sued for forcing detainees “to work for as little as $1 a day to clean, cook, and maintain the detention center in a scheme to maximize profits.” Detained people who protested this were also threatened with solitary confinement and even loss of food and calls to loved ones. These companies need to be held accountable. “For the first time, everybody who’s locked up in a GEO immigration prison, and who’s subject to the allegedly illegal policies, now has someone that they can look to as a voice, to bring their own treatment to light,” said attorney Andrew Free, who represents the GEO Group plaintiffs.
Posted with permission