For the relatives of people who were detained by ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement), it can be heartbreaking to imagine what their loved ones have to go through. One detainee in Georgia, however, has detailed what supposedly goes on in many ICE detention facilities; apparently, ICE is now bidding out the detainees to companies for cheap labor, where they get paid as little as $1 per day– if they’re lucky.
The rather worrying testimony came from Eduardo Zuniga, a detainee who allegedly works at the CoreCivic detention center’s kitchen, located in Lumpkin, Stewart County, Georgia. According to evidence compiled by the Freedom United organization, Zuniga suffered multiple on-the-job injuries, including a ligament tear in his knee and a shattered toenail, which then grew infected. Despite the injury, Zuniga was still forced to work in food service.
Zuniga was “Reportedly ‘threatened by CoreCivic guards’ that he would be sent to ‘the hole (solitary confinement)’ if he failed to report for work the following days,” according to the ICE detainee. Forced labor is supposedly justified in the ICE detention centers under the guise of “voluntary work programs”, usually slated for detainees who haven’t been convicted of any crime.
Further testimonies cite that the detainees also work for other food industries and food companies where the product goes out to the US supply chain. In some cases, the detainees were also being paid $1 per day so they could afford their $5 phone call to their loved ones or any lifeline they might have. It’s not clear to what extent the food companies or private contractors are “employing” the ICE detainees or whether they’ve done so directly or indirectly.
People online are calling it slavery
Freedom United didn’t exactly mince words in describing what the forced labor situation looked like in ICE detention centers, citing exceptions in the 13th Amendment where “Forced labor is allowed as ‘punishment for crime’ with due conviction,“ calling the exception a way where “slavery can continue lawfully in states across the nation.”
Meanwhile, people online have shared similar sentiments on the matter, where one commenter even stated that what’s happening is “Slave labor right here in America.” Some have wanted to have the contractors identified so that they can put pressure on the businesses: “If you have a list of businesses using this model, please name and shame so they can be highlighted as places to boycott or place pressure.”
Other commenters, however, have pointed out that other prisons in the US have been doing the same thing for years, and are being paid lower, “Idk why no one here wants to talk about that ahhaha for 12 cents an hour too.” Still, the manner in which ICE detainees were detained makes the comparison rather debatable.
