WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear an appeal from a private prison company facing a lawsuit claiming immigration detainees were forced to work and paid a $1 a day in Colorado.
The GEO Group appealed to the high court after a judge refused to toss out the 2014 lawsuit saying the detainees had to perform both unpaid janitorial work and other jobs for little pay to supplement meager meals.
The company says the lawsuits are really a back door way to push back against federal immigration policy, and its pay rates are in line with Immigration and Customs Enforcement regulations.
They say the migrants can’t sue because it’s running Aurora, Colorado, facility on behalf of the government, which is immune from such lawsuits.
When the government refuses to treat people with dignity, the alternative is violence. Break the social contract enough and people will fight back. Seems like we have to learn this lesson every few generations.
Regardless of how you feel about immigration or prisons in the US, the economics of the situation is bad policy. Slave labor suppresses wages. It also incentivises creating a larger prison population to generate more cheap labor.
