Aurora detention labor case heads to jury after 12-year legal battle

For twelve years, a group of attorneys has battled a private prison company in federal court over the daily routines at an immigration detention center in Aurora. That fight moves to a jury room this week, beginning with a trial scheduled for Monday.

The lawsuit, filed in 2014, names Geo Group as the defendant. The company operates the Aurora facility for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The legal team alleges that Geo Group forced immigrant detainees to clean their housing units. They claim detainees faced solitary confinement if they refused the work. The suit also argues the company gained unfair profits through a voluntary work program that paid detainees one dollar per day for various tasks.

The case lists nine former detainees as named plaintiffs, but it proceeds as a class action. This structure covers thousands of others held at the facility between 2004 and 2014. Hans Meyer, a Denver immigration lawyer on the team, describes the company’s approach as a rapaciously profitable business model. Geo Group is publicly traded and expects roughly three billion dollars in revenue this year. The company recently signed a temporary contract to extend its Aurora deal with ICE.

David Seligman, another attorney on the case, stated that the trial puts the core of Geo’s business model on trial. He said the case focuses on the exploitation engaged in by private prison companies to cut costs. The Aurora facility, opened in the 1980s, is the only detention center in Colorado with a capacity of 1,532 beds. It was Geo’s first federal detention contract.

Geo Group denied in early legal filings that its practices constituted forced labor or unjust enrichment. The company argued the cleaning requirement was a civic duty allowed under federal law. A minimum wage claim was dismissed in 2015, but the rest of the lawsuit advanced. Geo Group has faced other legal challenges nationwide, including a ruling in Washington state that ordered the company to pay 23 million dollars for wage violations.

The path to trial has been long. Geo Group repeatedly sought to dismiss or delay the case. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the company on a technical question earlier this year. Last week, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Geo’s final request to delay the trial in a short ruling. The trial is expected to last up to three weeks, with opening statements likely on Tuesday.

The lawsuit has spanned four presidential administrations and involved more than 40 attorneys. Meyer noted that public awareness of the brutality of immigration detention has finally caught up to reality. The case comes as scrutiny of ICE and Geo Group reaches a high point.