Inside the dark, booming business of coerced immigrant detainee labor.

In these private detention centers across the country, people who have been detained are saying they're forced to labor under the 'Voluntary Work Program' in which people who are in immigrant detention are supposed to work and be paid $1 a day. Contrary to what the name is, people who are filing suit say it's not a 'voluntary' work program. If they do not work they are threatened with being placed in solitary confinement, with being placed in more violent housing units, and with having basic necessities withheld from them.

Journalist Victoria Law reports on the $1-per-day labor of detained immigrants at privately run detention centers - under threat of solitary confinement and lack of food and sanitary items for refusing "voluntary" work - and explains why a series of lawsuits accusing ICE of human trafficking might bring down the private/public exploitation scheme.

Victoria wrote the feature Investigation: Corporations Are Profiting From Immigrant Detainees’ Labor. Some Say It’s Slavery. for In These Times.