Private prisons exploit ‘voluntary’ work arrangements to profit off of undocumented workers.
For generations, immigrants have assimilated and contributed to the economic well-being of our country because they were given the tools to do so. And while America may no longer be the ‘land of opportunity’ it once was, something must be done to prevent private prisons from using exploitative, ‘voluntary’ work arrangements to profit off of undocumented workers.
It is ironic that the only place in which illegal immigrants are allowed to work is within the confines of a Corrections Corp of America detention center for a mere $1-3 dollars a day. Here’s the real kicker: most of these wages go right back to the corporation since the CCA prison store is the only shop in town. Your thoughts?
From Truthout
“Voluntary” Work Program Run in Private Detention Centers Pays Detained Immigrants $1 a Day
By Yana Kunichoff, Truthout | Report
In the Stewart Detention Center in rural Lumpkin, Georgia, Pedro Guzman cleaned the communal areas, cooked, painted walls, ran paperwork and buffed floors. But Guzman was not brought into Stewart as an employee – he was a detained immigrant taking part in the detention center’s “voluntary” work program.
“I didn’t go more than a month without a job,” said Guzman, who spent almost 20 months waiting, and working, inside Stewart while his immigration case was resolved.
In private prisons around the country, immigrants languishing in detention centers are being put to work by profit-making companies like the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) for far below the minimum wage. For doing a range of manual labor in the facility, the immigrants, many of whom are not legally permitted to work in the United States, are paid between $1-$3 a day.
The Obama administration’s move away from the workplace raids of the Bush years and toward an increasing reliance on Secure Communities, which critics say has functioned as a dragnet for immigrants who have committed low-level crimes or none at all, has flooded detention centers across the country.
Between 1996 and 2011, deportations increased by 400 percent and the Department of Homeland Security now has a daily detention capacity of 34,000 beds. Along with this trend has come the widespread privatization of the federal detention centers.
Guzman was paid only $1 a day for cleaning communal areas in the detention center. When he moved to working in the kitchen – “an 8 hour job and you do get your full 30 minute break” – his pay shifted to $3 a day.
Most of the work in Stewart was done by detainees, said Guzman, who was placed into deportation proceedings when a letter about his asylum case was sent to the wrong address. “Ninety percent of the jobs in CCA are run by detainees,” he said of Stewart.
Immigrant rights advocates have called the voluntary work program another dehumanizing avenue for companies like CCA to profit from immigrants already in a vulnerable position.
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