IMMIGRATION Detained Immigrants Claim They Were Forced to Work Without Pay

ICE says immigrant detainees are only obligated to make their beds and avoid clutter. But a for-profit prison company is accused of forcing them to do much more – and for no wages.

Robin Urevich Published on August 26, 2019 By Robin Urevich

In 2017, Raul Novoa, who had been detained at the Adelanto Detention Center in the Mojave Desert near San Bernardino between 2012 and 2015, filed a class action suit alleging that he’d been forced to work for $1 a day at the facility, which is operated by the GEO Group, the nation’s largest for-profit detention firm, whose 2018 revenues totaled $2.3 billion.

Watch: Orange Is the New Green for Prisons

Now, Novoa’s attorneys are seeking to amend his complaint with new allegations that, as a part of company policy, GEO forces immigrants in its custody to work for no compensation at all in at least 14 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers under threat of serious harm. A victory for Novoa, or for the plaintiffs in any of eight other similar lawsuits against GEO and its slightly smaller competitor, CoreCivic, could have far-reaching consequences for the companies’ profits — and for the Trump administration’s immigration policies. The alleged threats include the use of pepper spray, solitary confinement and the reporting of misbehavior to ICE or immigration courts. This forced work is separate from the $1 a day work program over which Novoa sued.

ICE rules say that detainees can only be obligated to make their beds, straighten their papers and keep their floors and beds free of clutter, but plaintiffs’ attorneys note that GEO believes its “Housing Unit Sanitation Policy” falls within the regulations.

In an August 16 court filing, the attorneys point to the case of Abdiaziz Karim, a Somali asylum seeker who is currently detained at GEO’s 1,940-bed Adelanto facility. Karim said that about a year ago a GEO officer threatened him with solitary confinement for refusing to work cleaning windows, floors, showers and other areas for no pay. The same guard “tossed” Karim’s cell, “throwing his belongings and papers in disarray,” according to his complaint.

Novoa’s lawyers say Karim was also forced to work six-hour shifts in the Adelanto kitchen for a month in exchange for a total of $1. Under ICE’s Voluntary Work Program, detainees are paid about $1 a day, for which ICE reimburses GEO and other private firms that use detainee workers. ICE rules specify that detainees cannot be required to work, but Novoa’s lawsuit says his labor was not voluntary and seeks back pay and damages for both $1 a day workers like Novoa and another class of perhaps hundreds of thousands of detainees who, like Karim, were compelled to work for free.

Novoa, who worked as a barber and janitor, was allegedly threatened with solitary confinement if he didn’t work or encouraged others not to work or complained about his pay. His complaint contends that he was served “rotten meat, moldy bread and inedible produce,” and got headaches from drinking the water at the detention center, which “sometimes ran black for days.” Thus his need for a $1 daily wage to buy food, water and hygiene supplies that GEO failed to provide, despite its contractual obligation to do so, the complaint says.

GEO faces three other lawsuits similar to Novoa’s, while five are pending against CoreCivic.  In all of the cases so far, detainees allege they do virtually all the manual labor required to operate their own lock-ups.

All of the five lawsuits in which judges have ruled on motions to dismiss have survived the dismissal motions, and in the oldest case, filed in 2014, a Colorado judge ruled that the case could move forward as a class action on behalf of some 60,000 former detainees

“For these class action lawsuits against GEO and CoreCivic to have gone this far, it’s pretty obvious the firms made some big mistakes and might now have to pay for them,” wrote Jacqueline Stevens, a Northwestern University political science professor in her States Without Nations blog. Stevens directs the university’s Deportation Research Clinic and has researched and written extensively on detainee labor.