The $1 Per Day Issue

“Given the endless current debates on immigration-related topics, the ‘$1 Per Day Issue’ issue has, at times, arguably been lost amid other questions that are frequently raised about our current immigration policies.”

On July 19th, which was perhaps the hottest day of this past summer—at least in Eastern Pennsylvania—two freshman Democrats, Reps. Madeleine Dean and Mary Gay Scanlon, showed up unannounced to the Berks County Family Residential Center, one of three facilities in the United States that houses families of undocumented immigrants. The Center, which is operated by Berks County through a contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), housed, at the time of the trip, 25 undocumented immigrants, 13 of whom were children.

The trip itself was widely covered in the Pennsylvania media. In a press conference following their tour of the facility, the two members of Congress described their conversations with those housed inside, reported that the Pennsylvania facility boasted far better conditions than other facilities they had visited closer to the border, and fielded questions about the similarities and differences of immigration detention policies under the Obama administration, as compared to those under President Trump. This was particularly relevant given that the Berks facility has operated in a similar fashion (holding families) since 2001—thus spanning three presidential administrations.

However, one topic of discussion that was raised by Rep. Dean, which tends to escape the attention it arguably warrants, is that of the labor performed by undocumented immigrants during their time in ICE custody. Rep. Dean described individuals housed in the facility working for wages in the ballpark of one dollar per day, a point that had previously attracted notice when it was similarly raised by The Wall Street Journal in July, 2018. Andrew Free, a lawyer who has represented plaintiffs litigating against owners of detention centers where detainees work, indicated to The Wall Street Journal that, while it might be reasonable, in his view, for prisons to require work of their inmates, it is a different matter when it comes to those held for immigration-related reasons because “…immigration detention is civil in nature.”