Forced Labor Suit Leads To Detained Worker Bill of Rights
Rebecca Cassler, Senior Staff Attorney, Southern Poverty Law Center
After arriving at Stewart Detention Center (“SDC”), a 2000-bed immigration detention center in rural southwest Georgia, Wilhen Hill Barrientos faced a Hobson’s choice: the asylee from Guatemala could either work for nearly nothing at the facility or be placed in solitary confinement, without money to pay for sufficient food and costly phone calls to his family.
With no real choice, Mr. Hill Barrientos worked in the kitchen in SDC’s so-called “Voluntary Work Program,” cooking meals for up to 2,000 people daily. He regularly worked eight- to nine-hour shifts, and usually received $4 to $5 per day (or 50 cents per hour). Since SDC did not have outside kitchen staff other than a handful of supervisors, officers usually required Barrientos to work seven days a week, even when he was sick. After filing a grievance for being forced to work while sick, he was put in solitary for over a month.
Mr. Hill Barrientos pursued a civil suit against CoreCivic, Inc., the for-profit private prison company that runs SDC. Hill Barrientos was one of three named plaintiffs who sought injunctive relief and damages on behalf of a putative class of all work program participants at SDC going back to 2008, alleging forced labor under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1589, 1594, 1595, as well as unjust enrichment under Georgia law.
Stewart immigrant detention center uses forced labor
As of November 2023, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) held nearly 40,000 people in what is supposed to be civil custody. ICE’s immigration detention centers, the majority of which are operated by for-profit private prison companies like CoreCivic, are functionally indistinguishable from prisons or jails. These facilities run on the labor of detained people, who, like Mr. Hill Barrientos, do the cooking, cleaning, barbering, and laundry required to comply with the companies’ contracts with ICE. The two largest ICE detention contractors—CoreCivic and GEO Group—rake in over a billion dollars of revenue annually for detaining noncitizens under these contracts.
Barrientos v. CoreCivic, Inc., No. 4:18-cv-00070 (M.D. Ga.), is one of several class action suits filed on behalf of detained workers in ICE-contracted facilities around the country, which assert a variety of claims under not only TVPA and unjust enrichment, but also under state statutes such as minimum wage laws.
Early in the case, Barrientos v. CoreCivic resulted in a significant appellate win on an issue of first impression. In February 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal of CoreCivic’s motion to dismiss and held that the TVPA’s forced labor provision does apply to work programs in immigration detention facilities run by private contractors. Barrientos v. CoreCivic, 951 F.3d 1269 (11th Cir. 2020). Since then, other courts have followed suit, squarely rejecting the private prison companies’ argument that they are somehow exempt from TVPA liability.
A solitary confinement cell at Steward Detention Center. Credit: Southern Poverty Law Center.
In spring 2023, the district court denied Plaintiffs’ motion for class certification. The court concluded that even if all purported class members were subjected to the same policies at SDC, such as lack of adequate food and threats of discipline for refusal to work, there was not sufficient evidence to resolve the question of whether those common policies subjectively coerced each class member to work. On this basis, the district court found that the proposed classes lacked commonality, typicality, predominance, superiority, and ascertainability under Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Barrientos v. CoreCivic, 2023 WL 2666852 (M.D. Ga. Mar. 28, 2023). This decision is in tension with decisions certifying similar classes in Owino v. CoreCivic, Inc., 60 F.4th 437 (9th Cir. 2022) (affirming grant of class certification), cert. denied, 143 S. Ct. 2612 (2023), Menocal v. The GEO Group, 882 F.3d 905 (10th Cir. 2018) (affirming grant of class certification), cert. denied, 139 S. Ct. 143 (2018), and Novoa v. The GEO Group, Inc., No. EDCV 17-2514, 2019 WL 7195331 (C.D. Cal. Nov. 26, 2019) (granting class certification).
On the eve of trial, the plaintiffs in Barrientos reached a settlement with CoreCivic. Despite the lack of a certified class or a legal entitlement to injunctive relief, the plaintiffs were able to win as part of the settlement the requirement that CoreCivic provide a “Detained Worker Bill of Rights,” to all detained workers at SDC, which will make clear that they cannot be forced to work and can refuse to work at any time. The document will also spell out that they have the right to prompt monetary compensation, training, and safety equipment as well as respect from facility staff. The settlement guarantees access to the document in a language each worker understands. The settlement also provides other confidential benefits to the individual plaintiffs.
After five years of litigation, the plaintiffs are delighted that their hard work has resulted in meaningful change for those detained at SDC in the future. “The declaration of rights is a call to action to those in immigration jails to keep fighting for justice, and it makes clear that they should not face the abuses that I suffered at Stewart," said Mr. Hill Barrientos.
The case was litigated by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Project South, pro bono partner Perkins Coie LLP, and Gwyn Newsom Law, LLC. Prior members of the counsel team include Andrew Free and Burns Charest LLP.