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prisons
'Morally Reprehensible': For-Profit Immigrant Detention Centers Exploiting Prison Labor With $1 Per Day Wages
“The dichotomy between the contractors’ profits and the detainees’ pay is outrageous."
May 13, 2026
As President Donald Trump continues his mass detention and deportation agenda and expands the use of privately owned immigrant prisons, with more than 60,000 people detained across the country, the profits of private contractors like the GEO Group and CoreCivic are skyrocketing—and a new report by a government watchdog reveals one method the multibillion-dollar firms have of extracting profits from detainees.
Public Citizen researcher Douglas Pasternak wrote in a report released Wednesday that approximately 50% of immigrants who are detained for more than a few days end up in the government's so-called Voluntary Work Program (VWP), earning just $1 per day—12.5 cents per hour—while they keep the detention centers running.
At facilities like Adelanto Detention Center in Adelanto, California, run by the GEO Group, and CoreCivic's Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, detainees work as many as 14 hours in a day for just $1—cooking, cleaning, performing maintenance work, and completing other labor essential to the facilities' operations—and in many cases are forced to use their meager wages only at commissaries also run by the corporations.
"This entire $1-a-day pay scheme is economically unjustifiable, fundamentally unfair, and morally reprehensible," said Pasternak in a statement.
The companies are notorious for price gouging, forcing the so-called "voluntary worker" to work full-time for 11 days to afford a tube of Sensodyne toothpaste—priced at $11.02 at Stewart Detention Center, compared to just $5.20 on Amazon.
"At these rates, it may take a detainee more than three days of work to purchase a can of tuna fish or more than two days of work to purchase a bar of soap," said Public Citizen.
The business model has saved the contractors millions of dollars and allowed them to reap massive profits.
Former CoreCivic CEO Damon Hininger made $7.2 million in compensation last year before retiring, and the company's profits grew from $68.9 million in 2024 to $116.5 million last year. Both CoreCivic and the GEO Group reported well over $2 billion in revenue in 2025.
“The private contractors running immigrant detention centers are pocketing millions of dollars in profits as tens of thousands of detainees struggle to afford to purchase a bar of soap or a tube of toothpaste."
When it was sued over its use of the VWP in Washington State, the GEO Group testified that it would have had to pay 85 full-time employees at the state's minimum wage—$17.13 per hour—if it hadn't used the labor of detainees. Hiring workers would have cost the company over $3 million per year, but instead the GEO Group spent just over $22,000 paying imprisoned immigrants $1 per hour.
“The private contractors running immigrant detention centers are pocketing millions of dollars in profits as tens of thousands of detainees struggle to afford to purchase a bar of soap or a tube of toothpaste,” said Pasternak. “The dichotomy between the contractors’ profits and the detainees’ pay is outrageous."
In the case in Washington state, a court found that the GEO Group owed $17 million in back pay to thousands of detainees and owed nearly $6 million to the state for "unjust enrichment." The company has appealed to the Supreme Court. There are at least six other federal court cases challenging private companies for paying immigrant detainees $1 per day.
The report also describes a nine-bedroom, 11-bathroom, 18,523-square-foot home owned by GEO Group co-founder George Zoley in Boca Raton, Florida—estimated to be worth more than $22.5 million.
"The disparity between Zoley’s wealth and the $1 per day pay to detained immigrants is striking," reads the report. "The tens of thousands of immigrants detained by the US government deserve better than being paid $1 per day, and the federal contractors building an extensive network of detention camps across the country should not be making excessive profits at their expense."
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'This Isn't Justice': Trump to Bring Back Firing Squad, Electric Chair, and Gas Executions
"Expanding the federal death penalty will be a stain on our history," said Sen. Dick Durbin.
Apr 24, 2026
The US Department of Justice said on Friday that it was planning to bring back several long-abandoned methods of execution—including firing squads, gas asphyxiation, and electrocution—as part of President Donald Trump's effort to expand the use of the federal death penalty.
Trump has vowed to restore the death penalty at the federal level, reversing the moratorium imposed by former President Joe Biden, who downgraded the sentences of nearly all 40 people on death row to life in prison without parole.
"The prior administration failed in its duty to protect the American people by refusing to pursue and carry out the ultimate punishment against the most dangerous criminals, including terrorists, child murderers, and cop killers," said acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Friday. "Under President Trump's leadership, the Department of Justice is once again enforcing the law and standing with victims."
The federal government has never in modern history used the firing squad as a method of execution. And with the exception of Utah and South Carolina—the latter of which only revived the practice in 2025—it has not been used in state executions in the modern era.
The chair, which was the most common method of execution in the 20th century, was gradually phased out beginning in the 1980s because it came to be widely viewed as violent and cruel.
Meanwhile, execution by poison gas was carried on in the US for decades after the Nazis used it to murder millions of victims during the Holocaust, with states mostly abandoning it because it was viewed as expensive and impractical. However, Alabama and Louisiana have recently brought it back using nitrogen gas.
Nearly all executions at the state level are now carried out with lethal injections, which, despite being considered more "humane," are known to cause intense pain and suffocation and are frequently botched.
Blanche, who has authorized the government to seek the death penalty against nine people, said reviving old methods is necessary to ensure that the department "is prepared to carry out lawful executions even if a specific drug is unavailable."
According to data from the Death Penalty Information Center, nearly 1 in 8 people convicted and sentenced to death have later been exonerated. Meanwhile, more than 550 capital convictions, over 5% of them, have been overturned due to prosecutorial misconduct.
Efforts to revive antiquated methods are likely to draw challenges from civil rights groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, which have called the death penalty a form of "cruel and unusual punishment" forbidden by the US Constitution and one that disproportionately harms people of color.
"This isn’t justice. It’s cruel, immoral, and discriminatory," said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). "Expanding the federal death penalty will be a stain on our history."
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'Of Course': IDF Drops Case Against Soldiers Accused of Raping Palestinian Prisoner
“Israel’s military attorney general just gave his soldiers license to rape—so long as the victim is Palestinian," said one Israeli rights group.
Mar 12, 2026
The Israel Defense Forces on Thursday dismissed the indictments of five soldiers accused of raping a Palestinian prisoner at the notorious Sde Teiman prison in July 2024—an attack that sparked worldwide outrage.
The IDF spokesperson's office said the decision to drop the indictments of five reserve members of Force 100—a special unit of the military police responsible for guarding and controlling high-risk detainees—"was made following an examination of all the considerations, evidence, and relevant circumstances."
"Among the factors taken into account were the complexity of the evidentiary basis in the case and the implications of the release of the security detainee to the Gaza Strip, which created significant consequences for the evidentiary aspect of the case," the office added. "These developments created exceptional circumstances that affect the ability to continue the criminal proceedings while preserving the right of the defendants to a fair trial.”
The dismissal of the indictments, according to The Jerusalem Post, does not mean the soldiers have been exonerated.
The five soldiers were caught on video assaulting a Palestinian prisoner at Sde Teiman on July 5, 2024. Although they used riot shields in a bid to conceal the nearly 15-minute attack, medical reports cited in the case show the victim suffered serious rectal injuries requiring surgery, a ruptured bowel, punctured lung, and fractured ribs. An Israeli medical staffer said that the victim arrived at the hospital in critical condition.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza—welcomed the dismissal of the indictments, which he said had "damaged Israel's reputation in the world in an unprecedented manner."
Israeli President Israel Katz raised eyebrows by asserting that "the role of the IDF's legal system is to protect and safeguard IDF soldiers who engage heroically in war against cruel monsters, and not the rights of the terrorists of Hamas."
Netanyahu and Katz both called the prosecution of the Sde Teiman reservists a "blood libel."
The Defense Minister of Israel says it was "blood libel" to go after Israeli soldiers caught on camera raping a Palestinian.
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— Prem Thakker ツ (@premthakker.bsky.social) March 12, 2026 at 9:24 AM
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich similarly welcomed the dismissals, declaring that "now all that's left is to ensure that the ousted military advocate general stands trial.”
Smotrich was referring to Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, who admitted last year to authorizing the leak of the Sde Teiman assault video in order to "confront the false propaganda against the law enforcement officials in the military" by those who denied the allegations against the soldiers.
Human rights groups and others condemned the decision to kill the case, with the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) posting on social media that "Israel's military attorney general granted his soldiers a rape license—as long as the victim was Palestinian."
PCATI said that dismissing the indictments "adds to a long series of decisions and actions taken by the army... which cover up the violent violations that have occurred in Israeli prisons and detention facilities Increasingly since October 7, 2023."
Contrasting the failure to hold the reservists accountable with the draconian prison sentences given to Palestinians who resist Israel's illegal occupation, US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said on Bluesky: "Just so that we are clear, Israel drops criminal charges on five Israeli soldiers who were caught on camera sexually assaulting a Palestinian detainee. But Israel will keep kids in prison for decades because they were throwing rocks? Make it make sense."
Canadian journalist Justin Ling said that "the abuse inflicted on Palestinian detainees at Sde Teiman prison—including the murder of a Palestinian doctor—was inhumane."
"This one case, brought because the abuse was *caught on camera*, was a small sign that rule of law in Israel still worked," he added. "The Israeli government has dropped the case."
Israeli-American academic Shaiel Ben-Ephraim also noted the strength of the case, including the video footage of the assault.
"They had witness testimony," he added. "It was a slam-dunk case. Guards I talked to in Sde Teiman said this case was just the tip of the iceberg. And now they are dropping the charges. Of course."
Former Palestinian prisoners, IDF soldiers, and Israeli medical professionals have all said they witnessed torture and other abuse of detainees at Sde Teiman and other facilities. Victims ranged in age from children to the elderly.
Israeli physicians who served at Sde Teiman have described widespread severe injuries caused by 24-hour shackling of hands and feet that sometimes required amputations. Palestinians taken by Israeli forces have recounted rape and sexually assault by male and female soldiers, electrocution, maulings by dogs, denial of food and water, sleep deprivation, and other torture.
The New York Times reported on the case of one prisoner who died after allegedly being sodomized with an electric baton.
According to an analysis by Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, at least 98 Palestinians have died in Israeli prisons and military detention centers during the war. Many bodies of former Palestinian prisoners returned by Israel have shown signs of torture, execution, and mutilation.
The IDF has announced investigations into the deaths of dozens of Palestinian prisoners in its custody during the genocidal war on Gaza launched after the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023.
Nine Israeli soldiers were initially arrested in connection with the recorded Sde Teiman assault. Five of them were indicted in February 2025.
While many Israelis condemned the alleged rape of the Sde Teiman prisoner, others rallied around the accused soldiers—especially on the far right. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir hailed the reservists as “our best heroes.” Smotrich called them “heroic warriors.”
Smotrich and others demanded an investigation into the video showing the attack—not in order to seek justice for the victim, but rather to find out who leaked the damning footage.
The soldiers' arrests outraged many on the Israeli right. At least one Cabinet member and several members of the Knesset, Israel's legislative body, joined a mob that in August 2024 stormed two military bases where they believed the arrested suspects were being held.
Other Israelis, including journaist Yehuda Schlesinger, called for legalizing the torture of Palestinian prisoners, because "they deserve it," and "it's great revenge."
Last year, Israel blocked a request from United Nations sex crimes experts to probe alleged sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas fighters during the October 7, 2023 attack, reportedly to avoid attendant scrutiny of rapes and other abuses allegedly committed by Israeli forces against imprisoned Palestinians.
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