WASHINGTON | The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled against a private prison company facing a lawsuit alleging immigration detainees were forced to work and paid only $1 a day in Colorado.
The unanimous ruling is a procedural defeat for the GEO Group, but it’s not a final decision. The company is fighting a lawsuit from 2014 alleging detainees in Aurora had to perform unpaid janitorial work and other jobs for little pay to supplement meager meals.
GEO defended its practices and argued that the case should be tossed out because it’s immune from lawsuits as a government contractor.
After a judge disagreed, the company asked the Supreme Court to allow it to quickly appeal the ruling. But the justices refused.
The Florida-based GEO Group is one of the top private detention providers in the country, with management or ownership of about 77,000 beds at 98 facilities. Its contracts include a new federal immigration detention center where Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested at a protest in May 2025, before the case against the Democrat was dropped.
Similar lawsuits have been brought on behalf of immigration detainees elsewhere, including a case in Washington state, where the company was ordered to pay more than $23 million.
The GEO Group appealed to the high court after a judge refused to toss out the 2014 lawsuit saying the detainees had to perform both unpaid janitorial work and other jobs for little pay to supplement meager meals.
The company says the lawsuits are really a back door way to push back against federal immigration policy, and its pay rates are in line with Immigration and Customs Enforcement regulations.
They said the migrants can’t sue because it’s running the GEO ICE detention center in Aurora on behalf of the government, which is immune from such lawsuits.
Attorneys for the migrants say the lawsuit is only about people being paid “almost nothing” for their work, and the contract didn’t require them to pay so little.
A lower court judge allowed the lawsuit to go forward and the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals found it couldn’t review the immunity claim before trial. The GEO Group argued to the Supreme Court that government contractors should be able to argue that issue on appeal quickly.
A history of controversy in Aurora
The Aurora prison has been a magnet for protests, complaints and lawsuits for years.
In December, Aurora Democratic Congressperson Jason Crow created a bi-partisan bill restricting the government’s use of private prisons as immigration detention centers. Crow has been harshly critical of the GEO operation in Aurora since he was elected in 2018.
“Throughout my time in Congress, I have worked hard to promote transparency in government, and that includes making oversight visits to immigration detention facilities,” Crow said in a statement in June. “My experience being denied access to conduct an oversight visit of an immigration detention facility in my own community highlighted the importance of these visits in ensuring government accountability and the humane treatment of all those detained.”
While the issue of ICE detention facility oversight has long been a priority for Crow, recent efforts to ensure inspections at the prison come just as the Trump administration threatens mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, a program Trump has dubbed “Operation Aurora.” Aurora has been the focus of anti-immigrant controversy after national attention was drawn to a controversy surrounding Venezuelan immigrants and reported gang activity in local apartment complexes.
Since he was first elected in 2018, Crow has led local and national efforts to require the ICE prison, run privately in Aurora by GEO Group Inc., to allow for immediate inspections by members of Congress and others.
The GEO-ICE prison in Aurora has been the subject of numerous allegations and lawsuits focusing on the mistreatment of inmates, sometimes resulting in death.
Colorado Democratic Congressional Reps. Jason Crow and Joe Neguse conducted an unannounced oversight visit to the GEO ICE detention facility in Aurora Feb. 6, marking their first such inspection since a federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s effort to require advance notice for congressional visits.
The visit follows a ruling last week by U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, who granted emergency relief to Crow, Neguse and other Democratic lawmakers from across the country challenging a Department of Homeland Security policy that required members of Congress to give seven days’ notice before entering immigration detention facilities.
The policy was imposed in January by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem without public announcement, according to the lawsuit.
Under federal law, members of Congress are permitted to conduct unannounced oversight of facilities used for immigration detention, including those run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and private contractors such as the GEO Group.
In a joint statement, Crow and Neguse said the earlier this month that the administration has attempted to block lawmakers from carrying out their oversight responsibilities.
“The Trump Administration is trying to block Members of Congress from doing our jobs of conducting oversight. So we took them to court,” the lawmakers said. “The law is clear: Members of Congress have the right to conduct oversight of federal immigration facilities.”
The congressional members also pointed to deaths in custody and the scale of federal spending on immigration detention.
“Last year was the deadliest year at federal detention facilities in decades,” Crow and Neguse said in their statement. “Billions of taxpayer dollars are being used to carry out a violent and lawless immigration agenda. Coloradans deserve transparency and accountability.”
The court order earlier this month temporarily restored unannounced access to immigration detention centers while the legal challenge continues. ICE and DHS officials have argued the notice requirement is necessary for security and coordination, though lawmakers have rejected that explanation, saying it violates federal law and undermines congressional oversight.
The dispute over access has unfolded amid increased scrutiny of immigration detention facilities nationwide, as detention has expanded under President Donald Trump’s policies and lawmakers have raised concerns about transparency, accountability and detainee welfare.