Former Detainees Can Sue Private Prisons for Forced Labor
In an unprecedented case, a federal judge ruled Monday that a private prison company can be sued under federal laws prohibiting what amounts to slave labor.
The ruling allows current and former detainees at a privately-run immigrant detention center to join a class-action suit alleging that the contractor running the prison forced detainees to work for low or no wages, threatening solitary confinement for those who refused.
GEO Group, one of the nation’s largest private prison companies, runs facilities in Colorado and in Texas. Betsy Woodruff with the Daily Beast reports as many as 60,000 current and former detainees could act as plaintiffs in the case.
GEO Group and other large private prison companies get a significant portion of their business through contracts with the Department of Homeland Security to detain immigrants who may be in the country illegally and are awaiting immigration court proceedings.
Read more: http://www.texasstandard.org/stories/former-detainees-can-sue-private-prisons-for-slave-labor/
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