As shocking as it is to hear, up to 60,000 undocumented immigrants claim that they have been forced into unpaid labor in a Colorado private detention center.
If true, the practice was in violation of this nation’s anti-slavery laws. It would be further proof of the unethical practices behind profit based prisons.
For the very first time, a class action lawsuit alleging a violation of slavery laws has been allowed to go forward in this country.
Nina DiSlavo is the executive director of a non-profit organization called “Toward Justice.” They represent the interests of low wage workers, including undocumented immigrants. She says that the only way this group of people could find justice is through a class action suit. This group, all of them poor and all scattered around the country, have no other opportunity to file suit. She is relieved and delighted that the class action suit is being allowed to go on. She said:
“That’s obviously a big deal; it’s recognizing the possibility that a government contractor could be engaging in forced labor.”
The lawsuit was originally filed in the names of nine immigrants. It sought $5 million in damages for those people.
The suit was filed against a facility called the Denver Contract Detention Facility, which houses detained immigrants while their cases make their way through the system. The facility is run by GEO Group, a corporate prison system that runs detention centers around the world. GEO is under contract to ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement arm of the U.S. government.
Are you following all of this?
The US government, in the form of ICE, arrests and detains undocumented immigrants. It places them in privately owned facilities, which the American taxpayer pays to house and feed them.
Those people are then, allegedly, forced to work for $1 a day or for nothing at all. The lawsuit claims that six detainees per day are chosen at random to clean the facility. Those who refuse, they say, are threatened with punitive actions such as solitary confinement.
The facility, paid by taxpayers, is saving itself the cost of hiring maintenance crews. Its profits go up at the expense of those detained.
Now that the lawsuit has gained class action status, it will no longer represent only the original nine plaintiffs. According to one lawyer involved, around 60,000 people will be able to join the suit, meaning that the damages sought will increase exponentially.
The timing, lawyers say, is very important. That’s because President Trump is promising to detain and deport millions of undocumented immigrants in the next few months. Places like the Denver facility look to make huge profits, a likelihood that is reflected in the growth of their stocks since election day.
It will be interesting to see how the lawsuit progresses, given the number of lives that may be affected by the President’s actions in the next few months.
We can all hope that the days of slavery in the U.S. really are over.
Featured image via YouTube screengrab
