The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case involving the GEO Group, a $3.8bn company contracted to provide detention facilities to the US government. The company faces allegations of forced labor at an immigration detention center in Aurora, Colorado.
Migrants threatened with solitary confinement
The lawsuit, first filed in 2014, accuses GEO of violating federal anti-trafficking laws. One of the violations includes threatening the detained migrants with solitary confinement if they refused to work. The migrants are detained under civil immigration rules. The plaintiffs say this constitutes forced labor under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. A lower court allowed the case to proceed.
Rather than addressing the merits, the Supreme Court will consider whether the 10th Circuit was wrong to deny GEO’s claim of governmental immunity.
The LA Times reports,
GEO Group, on the other hand, argues that it should be granted the same legal protections as the government when performing governmental functions: “The alternative is a legal backdoor through which activists can undermine policies with which they disagree by targeting contractors with lawsuits they could never bring against the government.”
The lawsuit challenges a key feature of the US immigration detention system. One being the use of civil detention to subject non-criminal migrants — including asylum seekers — to exploitative labor under the legal exception carved out by the 13th Amendment.
A dangerous precedent
GEO, which operates more than a dozen immigration detention centers across the US, has long faced allegations of abuse. In 2023, the 9th Circuit upheld a $23 million judgment against the company for failing to pay minimum wage to detained workers in Washington state.
The current case is one of the first to directly challenge the $1-a-day work program as illegal forced labor. A victory for GEO could open the door to broader immunity claims from federal contractors across law enforcement and border control. This could leave one of the most vulnerable populations —migrants — without legal recourse.
Prison slavery in practice
Though framed as voluntary, the work programs in detention centers have been repeatedly exposed as coercive and abusive. Detainees are not serving criminal sentences, yet are being subjected to labor practices that would be illegal outside prison walls.
For years, the Freedom United community has called for the abolition of this exception and the end of forced labor of detainees.
The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery “except as a punishment for crime.” This exception continues to enable the exploitation of incarcerated and detained populations. It is wrong to force anyone, including the incarcerated, to work for free. And yet, to make matters worse, many of these immigration detainees have not committed any criminal act.
Advocates are urging the justices not to shield private prison companies from accountability. Upholding the right to challenge exploitative conditions in court is a vital step toward ending forced labor in all its forms.
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