Today I learned something that made me angry. Maybe you already knew about it. I didn’t, and when I first read about it I honestly thought, “This has to be fake news.” It was so cringeworthy that I felt compelled to look it up for myself.
It’s been a long day, so I am going to try to keep this short and sweet, with minimal hostility. That said, I am prepared to take full responsibility if a few hostile words slip through.
The discovery? The ICE Voluntary Work Program.
This came up in a friend’s Facebook post about ICE purchasing warehouses in small and mid-sized communities to house detained immigrants. My first reaction was simple: if the government is supposedly deporting people as quickly as possible, why invest in warehouses to house them at all? Would they eventually be used to house American citizens who did not agree with the regime (probably still a valid question)? My friend suggested that the detainees would not be deported but would be kept in the United States as a cheap source of labor.
That idea sent me down a research rabbit hole.
Here is what I have learned so far.
Although ICE itself did not exist in 1950, it operates using detention policies that were written long before the agency was created. One of those policies allows detained immigrants to be paid as little as one dollar per day for internal labor which includes work such as cooking, cleaning, and general maintenance inside detention facilities. This rule originated when immigration detention was overseen by the Immigration and Naturalization Service and was later absorbed into ICE after its formation following 9/11. While the work is officially described as voluntary, dozens of lawsuits allege that private contractors use coercion, including threats of solitary confinement or denial of basic necessities, to force detainees to participate.
Then there is the question of external labor. At present, there is no formal federal program that sends detained immigrants out to farms or hotels for a dollar a day. However, the Trump administration has recently floated the idea of a so-called temporary immigration pass. Under this proposal, undocumented workers in agriculture or hospitality could remain in the U.S. legally if their employers vouch for them and they pay taxes. Critics have been quick to point out what this really looks like: a pipeline to cheap, employer-controlled labor.
There are also legal challenges piling up. Courts are increasingly ruling against the one-dollar-a-day system when private contractors are involved. In Washington state, a jury ordered GEO Group to pay more than $23 million in back pay after finding that state minimum wage laws apply even inside private detention centers. The U.S. Supreme Court is now weighing whether these companies can claim sovereign immunity to shield themselves from similar lawsuits.
Here is where my anger really kicks in.
The White House keeps insisting they are only trying to remove “the worst of the worst.” That is a lie. But even if it weren’t, why would anyone put the so-called worst of the worst to work in farms and hotels? Does that logic make sense to anyone?
Because to me, it sounds a whole lot like slavery dressed up in bureaucratic language.
I am still learning about this program, and I suspect there is more to uncover. But what I have seen so far is deeply disturbing.
What do you think of this program?
Slavery has a way of resurfacing in history, especially when we try to disguise it with softer language and official policies. We have been here before, as a country that justified exploitation by calling it necessary, legal, or temporary. Programs like this force us to confront uncomfortable questions about who we believe is worthy of dignity and fair treatment, and who we decide can be used for convenience. If we cannot look at this honestly and call it what it is, then we are not just repeating history, we are choosing it.
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