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[AuthenticM]

From The Nation:

According to the Project on Government Oversight's (POGO) overview of complaints against ICE and its contractors over the past decade, the work imposed on incarcerated immigrants actually exploits a series of loopholes to deny them their entitled wages.

In one lawsuit filed against private-prison contractor the GEO Group, several detainees at an Aurora, Colorado, detention center accused the private security firm of illegally exploiting detainees ”to clean, maintain, and operate" the 1,500-bed facility. The detainees sued for wage theft, claiming GEO paid them just $1 per day, and sometimes nothing at all, when they were ordered to clean their own housing ”pods."

Detainee Alejandro Hernandez Torres testified about daily labor at Aurora from 2012 to 2015, when he first did ”cleaning work" without pay, and was then promoted to a $1-a-day job cleaning and waxing the floors. Torres recalled, ”The guards told us that if anyone didn't do the work, they'd be put in segregation," and he saw 10 detainees placed in confinement for failing to ”voluntarily" scrub their pods.

A recent class-action lawsuit against a San Diego facility managed by the private contractor CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America) described roughly 100 immigrants doing tasks like laundry and managing the commissary shop, for the standard dollar-per-day wage. They also allegedly worked ”voluntarily" to clean their own pods without pay, under the threat of ”severe mental pain and suffering," inflicted through ”solitary confinement" and ”physical restraint." Lawyers argued that this ”voluntary" system violated federal and California human-trafficking laws.

In a 2012 investigation of four ICE detention facilities in Georgia, the ACLU of Georgia described ICE detainees' being held in unsanitary, inhumane, isolating conditions, and regularly forced to work full-time for about $1 to $3 a day. Because of sparse rations, ACLU reported, ”some detainees began to work in the kitchen just so they could eat more.... one detainee lost 68 pounds." Their ”volunteering," in other words, involved literally working for food.

According to POGO, although prison labor routinely occurs in both government-run and privately contracted facilities, a key difference is that federal prison authorities report extensively to the public on conditions of detention. But prison contractors, as private businesses, have relatively little oversight and operate opaquely (even as they profit massively from government contracts).

The legal rationale behind coerced immigrant labor is an esoteric historical artifact. There is a 13th Amendment provision allowing pressed labor in criminal prisons. The $1 daily wage derives from an arbitrary rate set by the Geneva Conventions for prisoners of war. But POGO researcher Mia Steinle argues that, since immigrant detainees are held on civil rather than criminal charges, there is no legal justification for forcing them into modern-day chain gangs:

"The Thirteenth Amendment explicitly states that people who have been convicted of crimes can be forced to do labor.... But detainees shouldn't fall under the same umbrella, and lawyers are arguing that they deserve minimum wage for their work."

An added irony of this phenomenon is that ICE facilities are often sited in communities hoping to generate local jobs (Stewart, for example, is located in one of Georgia's poorest counties).

The ICE detainee workforce may swell in the coming months. In just the first half of the year, ICE arrests rose by some 40 percent, with a sharp rise in arrests of individuals without criminal convictions—yet relatively stagnant deportation rates suggest more are languishing in detention facilities. DACA recipients, losing the reprieve they were granted under Obama, may soon find themselves uprooted from their legal jobs and put to work cleaning up cell blocks. And compared to the Obama administration's more limited enforcement priorities, planned mass raids this fall will target an unprecedentedly broad range of noncitizens, including ordinary families and even asylum seekers. Meanwhile, reports of detainee abuse and inhumane treatment persist, and deaths in detention have spiked, mostly in private facilities.

Meanwhile the private-prison lobby anticipates a 450-percent expansion of ICE-contracted detention capacity, according to the San Diego lawsuit, providing a ”get into jail and work for free card" for the prison industry.

 

[KarneeKarnay]

Is this the shit left over from Jim Crow laws?

Fuck sake. What do you expect to happen when Private Business runs Prisons.

 

[Dude Abides]

ICE is a fascist organization.

 

[FlutterPuffs]

You guys already made a Nazi analogy

and I guess your leaders have now taken one step closer to it.

 

[Fuchsdh]

Wait, making people clean their own cells is considered work they must be paid for? Or is this solely related to the distinction between convicts and detainees used elsewhere about minimum wage?

 

[liquidtmd]

Concentrat....HAPPY CAMPS!

 

[AuthenticM]

ICE is a fascist organization.

Fascist organization serving as a tool for a fascist government.

 

[Brashnir]

Concentrat....HAPPY CAMPS!

Concentration Clubs.

 

[WaterAstro]

Looks like we need another civil war to end slavery again.

 

[Ahasverus]

Can Florida.gif be edited to USA.gif? What a political shithole, allowed by shit people.

 

[Derwind]

They really want to solidify the accussations that they're modern day gestapos.

 

[Pandora012]

Can Florida.gif be edited to USA.gif? What a political shithole, allowed by shit people.

Wouldn't Mexico still be attached though?

 

[Ahasverus]

Wouldn't Mexico still be attached though?

Canada, actually, maybe treat the hole between Canada an Mexico as a sea, "the actual freedom sea" has a nice ring to it.

 

[Bigboss242]

Wow never thought I'd live to see the United States turn into Nazi Germany yet here we are.

 

[Kensation]

Concentration Clubs.

Holocaust Centers

 

[jstripes]

Concentration Clubs.

Productivity Encouragement Centers.

 

[FIREKNIGHT2029]

Wow, just wow. This country is fucked up.

 

[Az987]

The 13th amendment bans enslavement unless as punishment for a crime so yeah, slavery is alive and well.


Edit: nm, just realized they aren't technically convicted of crimes, so yeah, a bit more fucked up than usual.

 

[OG Shaka Zulu]

And keep in mind there is rampant sex abuse in these camps. Women and children are abused by their traffickers along their journey here, get detained at the border only to suffer sexual abuse again at the hands of prison guards. It's a common and terrible experience amongst my clients.

 

[ClosingADoor]

Stop the damn prison industry you guys got running there. That stuff should be government run, and even then with plenty of checks.

 

[Brandon F]

Stop the damn prison industry you guys got running there. That stuff should be government run, and even then with plenty of checks.

But Republicans can't profit off government-regulated institutions with heavy control filters!