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.
Stories like this are why I can’t help but laugh a little whenever I see a thread about Ukraine or something and it’s filled with a few hundred people who honestly think we’re the good guys in the world. This headline should be impossible, but it’s not.
Here in the US it’s legal, and likely constitutional, since our Constitution allows for the legal enslavement of people convicted of a crime.