A federal judge in Denver gave the green light for immigrants to file a class action lawsuit against a private prison operator.
The lawsuit is centered on a 1,500-bed facility operated by GEO Group and located in Aurora, Colorado. Former detainees allege that their labor was taken advantage of. Inmates past and present said they’d been paid less than $1 per day for tasks like cooking, cleaning, and laundry. Anyone who refused to work would be threatened with solitary confinement or criminal charges.
Most of the individuals held at the facility were being charged with civil, immigration-related offenses. Few, if any, were violent criminals.
U.S. District Judge John Kane refused requests to dismiss the lawsuit and has said he’ll allow it to proceed. Fox News suggests that around 50,000 people scattered across the world could opt in.
Lawyers for the inmates claim GEO Group violated the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which “prohibits obtaining labor or services from someone “by means of force, threats of force, physical restraint, or threats of physical restraint.”
Kane wrote in his decision that he felt a class action lawsuit was appropriate for the case. Many of detainees who have since been released no longer reside in the United States; others cannot speak English proficiently and or do not have the financial means to mount an independent legal offense.
Fox News also spoke to Nina DiSalvo of Towards Justice, which is the nonprofit backing the inmates. She said that the GEO Group made such extensive use of immigrant labor that it only employed one full-time custodian at its 1,500-bed Aurora facility. DiSalvo is optimistic that Kane’s ruling will pave the way for similarly exploited detainees to challenge their captors.
“American immigration policy is too often driven by the profit motives of the private corporations that we pay to round up and detain immigrants,” DiSalvo said to Fox. “Judge Kan’s ruling allows vulnerable detainees to band together and hold GEO accountable for profiteering on the backs of its captive labor force.”
Private prisons have been criticized in the past for having a financial stake in keeping individuals and immigrants incarcerated. Research studies from the University of Utah, as well as audits by the Department of Justice, found that CivicCore (formerly the Corrections Corporation of America) and GEO Group-operated jails and detention centers didn’t save much taxpayer money and were generally more dangerous than their federal counterparts.
GEO Group is one of the largest operators of private prisons in the United States. The corporation holds a contract with the Bureau of Prisons. Originally expected to have its contract rescinded, Attorney General Jeff Sessions reversed an Obama-era move to stop cooperation between the federal government and for-profit jailers.
Pabo Paez, the vice president of GEO’s corporate relations division, maintained that his company abided by all labor regulations. He described what’s being called forced labor as a “volunteer work program.”
Sources
Federal judge OKs ‘forced labor’ class-action suit by immigrants against private prison company
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