The Trump administration is quietly relaxing standards for how immigration detainees can be treated in lockup — and one of those changes may run afoul of the 13th Amendment's prohibition on "slavery or involuntary servitude."
According to The Washington Post, Geo Group, a private prison contractor in charge of many of the detention facilities, "has faced lawsuits in three states alleging it violates minimum-wage laws by paying some immigrant detainees $1 a day to work. The company maintains that the work is voluntary and that it operates the program at the direction of the government."
Now, in a new change of policy, Geo requested Immigration and Customs Enforcement "remove lines saying contractors needed to follow state and local laws around the treatment of detainees and that ICE amend language to support its legal position in these cases," per the report. Under the new policy, detainees are not considered employees “and are not entitled to wages or benefits under applicable wage laws or labor regulations."
But local labor laws might not be the only thing getting circumvented, former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance noted on X Tuesday.
"Sounds a lot like skirting the constitutional prohibition on involuntary servitude by paying $1/day & claiming that immigration detains [sic] volunteered to do that," she wrote.
The 13th Amendment's prohibition against slavery and involuntary servitude carves out an exception when imposed "as punishment for a crime," and prisons in some states have for years been allowed to institute compulsory labor for extremely low pay or no pay at all. However, immigrant detainees in most cases have not been convicted of any crime.
With mass deportation plans being scaled up under the Trump administration, The Post reported, ICE "has relied on Geo to help it significantly expand the nation’s capacity for holding ICE detainees," as "advocates for immigrants and some state regulators say poor oversight at many of these facilities has led to the mistreatment of migrants."