By LINDSAY WHITEHURST
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Courtroom agreed Monday to listen to an attraction from a non-public jail firm going through a lawsuit claiming immigration detainees had been compelled to work and paid a $1 a day in Colorado.
The GEO Group appealed to the excessive court docket after a choose refused to toss out the 2014 lawsuit saying the detainees needed to carry out each unpaid janitorial work and different jobs for little pay to complement meager meals.
The corporate says the lawsuits are actually a again door method to push again towards federal immigration coverage, and its pay charges are according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement laws.
They are saying the migrants can’t sue as a result of it’s operating Aurora, Colorado, facility on behalf of the federal government, which is immune from such lawsuits.
Attorneys for the migrants say the lawsuit is simply about folks being paid “virtually nothing” for his or her work, and the contract didn’t require them to pay so little.
A decrease court docket choose allowed the lawsuit to go ahead and the U.S. tenth Circuit Courtroom of Appeals discovered it couldn’t assessment the immunity declare earlier than trial. The GEO Group argued to the Supreme Courtroom that authorities contractors ought to have the ability to argue that subject on attraction shortly.
The Florida-based GEO Group is without doubt one of the prime non-public detention suppliers within the nation, with administration or possession of about 77,000 beds at 98 amenities. Its contracts embody a brand new federal immigration detention middle the place Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested at a protest in Could.
Related lawsuits have been introduced on behalf of immigration detainees elsewhere, together with a Washington state case the place the corporate was ordered to pay greater than $23 million.
Related Press author Mike Catalini in Trenton, New Jersey, contributed reporting.
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