The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Feb. 25 that a private prison contractor will have to face a civil trial in a lawsuit alleging that immigration detainees were illegally made to work for $1 a day.

The GEO Group was sued by a former detainee who claimed the company’s inmate work policies violated federal and Colorado law.

The company argued it should not have to proceed to trial because its work policies were enforced under the guidance of U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE).

The justices said the extent to which the work policies were authorized by ICE was an issue that should be dealt with at trial.

Writing for the court, Justice Elena Kagan said, “if eventually found liable, GEO may of course appeal.”

“But GEO must wait until then,” Kagan said in the opinion in GEO Group Inc. v. Menocal.

Lead respondent Alejandro Menocal, who was previously an immigration detainee at a GEO facility in Colorado, filed a class-action lawsuit against the company.

He argued GEO violated the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which forbids forced labor, as well as Colorado’s ban on unjust enrichment, according to Menocal’s brief.

Unjust enrichment means a defendant received a benefit at the plaintiff’s expense, and it would be unfair for the defendant to keep the benefit without paying for it.

GEO operates the Aurora Immigration Processing Center in Colorado, which holds individuals awaiting processing in immigration courts.

The federal government pays GEO “millions of dollars a year” to prepare meals, do laundry, perform janitorial work, and carry out building maintenance, the brief said.

“The company forced every person detained at the Aurora Center to perform unpaid janitorial work, threatening that if they refuse, they will be sent to ‘the hole’—solitary confinement,” the brief alleged.

GEO allegedly did this even though its contract with ICE forbade it from making detainees in Aurora perform work other than “personal housekeeping,” according to the brief.

In the beginning, the brief alleged, GEO paid detained workers $1 per day, plus one bottle of soda each week, but it later reduced total compensation to a flat $1 per day. In addition to performing sanitation duties, detainees “performed virtually all non-security-related work needed to operate the facility,” the brief said.

GEO invoked the doctrine of derivative sovereign immunity, saying that as a government contractor, it could not be sued.

Sovereign immunity is a legal doctrine that prevents governments from being sued unless they consent to being sued.

Derivative sovereign immunity, also called Yearsley immunity, is a legal doctrine that extends sovereign immunity to companies contracted to do government work.

GEO moved to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that Yearsley immunity should prevent the legal action from moving forward because its activities were directed by ICE.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado rejected the motion in October 2022.

Judge John Kane found that “neither derivative sovereign immunity nor the government contractor defense protects [GEO] from liability.”

In October 2024, a three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit affirmed, finding that the “district court’s order denying application of the Yearsley doctrine is not subject to interlocutory appeal.”

An interlocutory appeal is one involving a non-final order made during litigation.

GEO said in its petition to the Supreme Court that federal courts of appeals are divided on the question of “whether an order denying a government contractor’s claim of derivative sovereign immunity is immediately appealable under the collateral-order doctrine.”

The collateral-order doctrine holds that an interlocutory decision may be appealed if three conditions apply, according to Cornell Law School.

The conditions are that the decision must have conclusively resolved the question in dispute, the question is important and completely separate from the merits of the case, and the decision is “effectively unappealable after a final judgment is handed down,” according to Cornell.

GEO argues that in this case, the respondents, who disagree with U.S. immigration policy, are using the courts “to cripple the implementation of the policies they disfavor.”

Because sovereign immunity precludes their effort to sue the government directly, “they have instead sued the government’s agent,” the petition said.

The 10th Circuit did not reach the issue of derivative sovereign immunity because it threw out GEO’s appeal after finding that the denial of that immunity does not count as a collateral order that may be appealed, the petition said.

In the Supreme Court’s new opinion, Kagan said the 10th Circuit lacked jurisdiction, or authority, over GEO’s appeal.

GEO may appeal the district court’s denial of the company’s Yearsley immunity-related defense, but it may do so only after that court’s proceedings have completed, Kagan said.

The Supreme Court affirmed the ruling of the 10th Circuit.

This article by Matthew Vadum appeared Feb. 25, 2026, in The Epoch Times.

Photo: Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan