A recent Washington Post article describes a lawsuit filed against ICE immigration detention facilities for using imprisoned immigrants as slaves. If true, the irony is truly astounding. Rather than allowing immigrants into the country to fill much needed jobs, we are imprisoning them at great public cost, where they are being used as slaves by unscrupulous companies. According to the lawsuit, prisoners were forced to clean the prison facility at no pay. Of course, if true, this would mean that not only are US taxpayers paying to imprison such families, prisoners are being used to fill jobs at government contracted facilities that could have been filled by Americans.
One can imagine the future of such a system, where immigrants are imprisoned for the crime of crossing the border for work, but are then used as slaves to pick fruit, wash dishes and mow lawns. Already, ICE has a program that "allows" prisoners to work for $1 a day, less than what the would have earned working without papers in the informal economy, and far less than what they would earn under a voucher program. This is truly the future of American slavery.
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