HSPRD recently secured a unanimous ruling by the United States District Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in favor of former civil immigration detainees housed at the Kenosha County Jail. HSPRD brought class action claims for forced labor in violation of § 1589 of the Trafficking Victim’s Protection Act (“TVPA”) against Kenosha County and jail administrators on behalf of civilly detained immigrants who were forced to perform janitorial labor at the jail under threat of punishment, including solitary confinement.
The United States District Court of the Eastern District of Wisconsin had dismissed plaintiffs’ claims, ruling that the TVPA’s forced labor provision did not apply to civilly detained immigrants forced to perform cleaning labor. The Seventh Circuit vacated that decision and remanded, reasoning that “nothing in either the text or context of § 1589 permits a local jail to compel civil detainees—persons not subject to punishment—to work on pain of solitary confinement or loss of phone contact with the outside world.”
Former civil immigration detainees, Aleksey Ruderman, Arturo Saldivar, and Chris Pocknell, are represented by HSPRD partners Margaret Truesdale and Elizabeth Mazur.
More information about the case can be found in the full appellate decision.
