GEO Group Immigration Detainee Lawsuit: Class and Immunity Ruling

The GEO Group immigration detainee lawsuit is a class action filed in 2014 by people held at the company’s Aurora, Colorado detention center, who accuse GEO of forcing them to clean the facility without pay and paying just one dollar a day for other work. After more than a decade of pretrial fighting, the U.S. Supreme Court in February 2026 unanimously rejected GEO’s attempt to shut the case down on immunity grounds, and the case is now heading toward trial.¹

What the Detainees Allege

Nine named plaintiffs, current and former civil immigration detainees at GEO’s Aurora Detention Facility, filed Menocal v. The GEO Group, Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado on October 22, 2014.² ICE officially calls the site the Denver Contract Detention Facility. It typically holds more than 1,000 people and is run by GEO under an ICE contract.³

The complaint challenges two labor practices. The first is a mandatory sanitation policy that required detainees to clean common areas — walls, floors, toilets, sinks, windows, and furniture — without any pay. According to the complaint, detainees who refused faced escalating punishments up to 72 hours in solitary confinement. The second is GEO’s “Voluntary Work Program,” under which detainees performed jobs like food preparation and laundry for one dollar per day.⁴

The plaintiffs brought three claims: that the forced cleaning violated the Trafficking Victims Protection Act’s ban on forced labor at 18 U.S.C. § 1589; that the dollar-a-day wages violated Colorado’s minimum wage law; and that GEO was unjustly enriched by the cheap labor.⁵ In July 2015, Senior District Judge John L. Kane dismissed the state minimum wage claim but allowed the forced labor and unjust enrichment claims to proceed.²

The one-dollar rate itself traces back to a 1950 federal statute at 8 U.S.C. § 1555(d). ICE’s Performance-Based National Detention Standards require facilities to pay at least a dollar a day but set no ceiling.⁶ The rate has not been increased since 1950.⁷

Who Is in the Class

On February 27, 2017, the court certified two classes. The forced labor class covers everyone detained at the Aurora facility in the ten years before the lawsuit was filed, a window later narrowed to begin on December 23, 2004. The unjust enrichment class covers everyone who worked in the Voluntary Work Program in the three years before the filing.² Advocates estimate the combined class at roughly 50,000 to 60,000 detainees.⁸ The plaintiffs are represented by Towards Justice and Outten & Golden LLP, along with several other firms.⁹

GEO’s Immunity Defense and the Supreme Court Ruling

As the case approached trial, GEO argued it was shielded by “derivative sovereign immunity,” a defense rooted in the 1940 Supreme Court decision Yearsley v. W.A. Ross Construction Co. The theory: because GEO ran the Aurora facility under an ICE contract, it should share the government’s own protection from suit, and the case should be dismissed outright.¹⁰

Judge Kane rejected that argument in October 2022. He found that “ICE neither directed nor required GEO to compel detainee labor or limit compensation to $1.00 per day.” GEO had developed the labor policies on its own, so it could not hide behind the government’s authority.⁴ Rather than proceed to trial, GEO tried to immediately appeal that ruling, arguing the Yearsley defense gave it a right to avoid trial entirely. The Tenth Circuit dismissed the appeal in October 2024, and GEO petitioned the Supreme Court.¹

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on November 10, 2025. Dominic E. Draye argued for GEO and Jennifer D. Bennett for the detainees, with Assistant to the Solicitor General Sopan Joshi appearing as amicus in support of the detainees. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce backed GEO; AFSCME and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington backed the detainees.¹¹¹²

On February 25, 2026, the Court ruled 9–0 against GEO. Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the majority, distinguished between an “immunity from suit,” which is a right not to be tried at all and can be appealed immediately, and a “merits defense,” which is just an argument that a defendant did nothing wrong and can be reviewed after trial. The Yearsley defense, Kagan wrote, is a merits defense: it “runs out when the contractor may have violated the law.” Because it can be fully vindicated on appeal after final judgment, GEO had no right to an immediate appeal.¹⁰ The Court also rejected the broader claim of derivative sovereign immunity. “Sovereign immunity belongs alone to the Government,” Kagan wrote, and cannot be transferred to private contractors.¹

Justices Thomas and Alito each wrote separately but joined the outcome.¹ The decision closed off a shortcut that government contractors across industries had used to exit lawsuits early. It left open a separate question the majority did not decide: whether contractors can invoke qualified immunity, the doctrine that shields government officials from personal liability.¹³

What Happens Next

The Supreme Court’s official judgment issued on March 30, 2026, and the case was remanded to the district court. The stay that had paused proceedings during the appeals was lifted on March 12, 2026.² No trial has yet occurred, and no damages have been awarded. The Supreme Court noted in its opinion that “a trial would be necessary to address whether GEO’s policies violated the referenced bans on forced labor or unjust enrichment.”¹

GEO can still raise the Yearsley defense at trial. What it lost is the ability to halt the case to appeal that defense before trial. On a May 2026 earnings call, GEO CEO George Zoley called the litigation against the company’s detention facilities “unprecedented” and “unconstitutional,” and disclosed that GEO has been in discussions with ICE about selling multiple facilities to the federal government, arguing that federal ownership would provide “more protections from unwarranted litigation.”¹⁴

Related Cases at Other Detention Centers

The Menocal case is one of several targeting labor practices at privately run immigration detention centers, and the outcomes elsewhere give a sense of what a merits trial can produce.

In Nwauzor v. The GEO Group, Inc., a class of more than 10,000 detainees at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington alleged GEO violated the state Minimum Wage Act through the same dollar-a-day work program. A jury in 2021 unanimously found GEO liable and awarded $17.3 million in back wages. A federal judge added $5.9 million in unjust enrichment penalties, bringing the total judgment to $23.2 million.¹⁵ The Ninth Circuit affirmed in January 2025 and denied rehearing in August 2025. The Voluntary Work Program at that facility was subsequently shut down.¹⁶

GEO’s main competitor, CoreCivic, has faced similar suits. In Barrientos v. CoreCivic, Inc., detainees at the Stewart Detention Center in Georgia alleged CoreCivic coerced them into working for one to four dollars a day through threats of solitary confinement and the withholding of basic necessities like food, soap, and toothpaste. The Eleventh Circuit ruled in 2020 that the Trafficking Victims Protection Act applies to private contractors operating federal immigration detention facilities.¹⁷ The case settled in October 2023, with CoreCivic agreeing to give all work-program participants a written declaration of their rights, including the right to refuse work without punishment.¹⁸

1
Supreme Court of the United States. GEO Group, Inc. v. Menocal, No. 24-758
2
Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. Menocal v. The GEO Group, Inc.
3
Colorado Newsline. Report Offers Firsthand Stories of Conditions in Aurora ICE Facility
4
Justia. GEO Group, Inc. v. Menocal
5
Deportation Research Clinic. Menocal v. The GEO Group, Inc. Complaint
6
ICE. PBNDS 2011, Section 5.8 – Voluntary Work Program
7
University of Chicago Law Review. Defining Forced Labor
8
Towards Justice. Fighting Forced Labor in Private Immigrant Detention Centers
9
Outten & Golden. Menocal v. Geo Group
10
SCOTUSblog. Court Rejects ICE Contractor’s Right to Immediate Appeal
11
SCOTUSblog. The GEO Group, Inc. v. Menocal
12
Cornell Law Institute. The GEO Group, Inc. v. Menocal – Certiorari
13
Wiley. How Justices’ GEO Ruling Resets Government Contractor Litigation
14
The Appeal. GEO Group ICE Lawsuits
15
Washington Attorney General. Ninth Circuit Affirms For-Profit Operator of Northwest ICE Processing Center Violated Minimum Wage Law
16
Washington State Standard. Tacoma Detention Center Must Pay for Violating Minimum Wage Law, Appeals Court Affirms
17
U.S. Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit. Barrientos v. CoreCivic, Inc.
18
Southern Poverty Law Center. Settlement in Forced Labor Case Against Private Prison Company Operating Immigration Detention Center