1. United States
2. Md.
3. Letter

Shut down the forced labor programs operating inside GEO Group and CoreCivic detention facilities. A Public Citizen report exposes these companies paying detained immigrants $1 a day for labor, with solitary confinement used as a threat for anyone who refuses. That is not a labor program. That is coercion, and it meets any honest definition of forced labor. While detainees earn a dollar a day, GEO Group's profits jumped from $32 million to $254 million in a single year. These corporations are extracting wealth from people who have no meaningful ability to say no, and taxpayers are funding the infrastructure that makes it possible. This cannot continue with congressional silence. Introduce or co-sponsor legislation to ban compensated labor programs in immigration detention facilities, and demand a full investigation into ICE's oversight of these contracts. If you won't act to stop a for-profit company from threatening people with solitary confinement to keep them working, I need to know why.