After 12 years of federal litigation, on the morning of trial, plaintiffs and their counsel in Menocal v. The GEO Group announced a settlement with GEO on behalf of a class of tens of thousands of people previously detained at GEO’s immigration detention center in Aurora, Colorado. Plaintiffs are represented by Meyer Law Office, Milstein Turner PLLC, Outten & Golden and Towards Justice.
The case is a first-in-the-nation class action alleging, among other things, that GEO violated the federal forced labor statute by forcing detainees to clean the facility under the threat of solitary confinement and that it was unjustly enriched by paying detainees $1 a day to maintain the facility. The full terms of the proposed settlement will become public when the parties move for preliminary approval in federal district court.
Statement from Class Counsel:
“Class Counsel express our collective pride for the opportunity to represent courageous clients who fought for more than a decade for justice for themselves and tens of thousands of others. Our clients suffered the inhumane treatment alleged here while locked up in a detention center just a few miles from the federal courthouse. And like so many across the country, they’ve been victimized by a broken immigration system. But in the face of long odds, they kept fighting for justice and never gave up. This settlement shows that our legal system can still sometimes provide justice, even for the most marginalized.”