Focus Areas

On our Legal Review Docket for the week of November 17, 2025:

Summary

Novel questions of law in the 2nd Circuit’s Yeend v. Akima present a compelling case to vindicate the rights of incarcerated immigrant-workers.

Background

Novel questions of law brought by thousands of former-immigrant detainees (“Plaintiffs” or “Class-Plaintiffs”) are being considered in the Second Circuit, teeing up a sweeping investigation into alleged human rights and labor abuses occurring in privately-run U.S. immigration detention facilities.[1]  The case—Yeend v. Akima—centers around Class-Plaintiffs involuntary commitment to a work program run by for-profit detention facility Defendant Akima Global Services, LLC (“Akima” or “Defendant”).

Plaintiffs claim that Akima operated a so-called Voluntary Worker Program (“Program” or “VWP”), which effectively required Plaintiffs to perform custodial tasks in-voluntarily around the detention facilities—such as cleaning housing units and kitchens—for substantially less than what minimum wage laws require.  Akima’s alleged underpayment and forced labor practices serve as the factual predicate underlying Class-Plaintiffs’ case.

Courts in other jurisdictions have considered similar cases involving forced labor of plaintiff-detainees in privately-run immigration facilities.[2]  In those cases, formerly detained plaintiffs succeeded in jury and bench trials, winning tens of millions of dollars in damages. These are significant victories for detained immigrant-laborers. Advocates interested in the protection of human rights for incarcerated individuals should look to these cases as models for advancing litigation in other districts.

Akima’s attempt to circumscribe state labor law claims fails.

In October 2025, a U.S. Court of Appeals panel for the Second Circuit considered whether to take up Yeend on an interlocutory—or mid-litigation—appeal. An interlocutory appeal is an exceedingly rare motion typically reserved for the most urgent, unresolved matters of law, as it halts proceedings at the lower level thereby substantially delaying the ultimate resolution of a case.  

The question referred to the Second Circuit panel came from the lower U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, which asked whether Plaintiffs should be allowed to raise both their New York state labor law claims and their federal labor law claims all together in the same case. Akima said that such consolidated action would make the case too difficult to manage, even though the factual predicates underlying the state and federal law claims were virtually identical, argued Class-Plaintiffs.

On November 4, 2025, the Second Circuit agreed with Class-Plaintiffs, ordering the case back to the District level where further fact-finding will occur. The Second Circuit’s decision effectively allows the New York state and U.S. federal law claims to proceed together, which is a positive sign for formerly incarcerated immigrant workers and their advocates as it gives them more leverage to pursue remedies using consolidated legal authorities in one streamlined litigation, rather than in two separate district and federal cases.

Class-Plaintiffs will have the opportunity to prove that Akima forced them to work by making living conditions unbearable for those who refused.

Despite what the name would suggest, Plaintiffs allege that Akima’s VWP was entirely un-voluntary, as any refusal to participate in the work program would result in immediate retaliation and unbearable living conditions while incarcerated.

In excoriating detail, Plaintiffs complaint describes a system wherein Akima would forcibly compel detainees to work by shutting down entire housing units: everyone was locked in their cells, deprived of food and basic necessities, restricted from communicating with the outside world, and subject to “shakedowns” and prolonged periods of solitary confinement—until every single detainee agreed to participate in the VWP. The hostile environment Akima created, Plaintiffs argue, led to such severe mental and physical distress that those incarcerated became desperate for any kind of relief, with Akima offering only one way out of their suffering: get to work.

Akima receives more money for each bed filled, however, it pays detainee-laborers significantly lower than market rate for a full day’s work. This basic premise underlines their business model, which is built off the backs of their detainees, regardless of whether that person is being lawfully held.

Federal Judge finds that a jury could reasonably determine Akima violated the law.

Akima, like all federal contractors, is required to manage its detention facilities in accordance with the law, including those regarding forced labor. The Hon. District Court Judge Anne M. Naracci closely examined the existing record gathered from years of class litigation and held that a jury could reasonably find that Akima violated the law. Specifically, Plaintiffs’ allegations that Akima unlawfully and forcibly coerced detainees into working against their will presents a triable case for violations of the federal Trafficking Victim’s Protection and Reauthorization Act (“TVPRA”). This law was designed, in-part, to ensure that the individuals and groups responsible for overseeing the reprehensible day-to-day atrocities of forced labor and internment would face accountability. Now, Plaintiffs can proceed under both the TVPRA and New York State Labor Law claims.

Akima’s reply to this suit largely ignores the depravity of the alleged abuses, effectively sidestepping the issue by saying that its conduct wasn’t so bad and that forced labor in the human trafficking context is “[t]ypically” worse. This argument amounts to one about “what constitutes ‘real’ human trafficking” and was unpersuasive to the Court. See “Memorandum-Decision and Order” Yeend, 31 March 2025, p. 23. Akima’s defenses, instead, rest on a tenuous legal theory of “derivative sovereign immunity”—basically, that they should not be subject to a lawsuit because they are acting in a quasi-governmental capacity. This theory has been soundly rejected by other courts considering similar issues.[3]

Advocates are successfully using state and federal labor laws to vindicate the rights of detained immigrant-workers across the country.

In the Ninth Circuit’s Nwauzor v. GEO Group, Inc. case, a class of immigrant detainees had alleged that a private detention center’s administration of a VWP violated Washington’s minimum wage laws and unjustly enriched defendant, meaning the detention center unlawfully benefitted at the expense of immigrant detainees. Following jury and bench trials, the defendant was found liable for more than $23 million in damages and subsequently appealed.

Now, in Yeend, Class-Plaintiffs are similarly looking to vindicate their rights and advance justice. The parties are back before Judge Naracci where Plaintiffs are free to bring both their U.S. federal and New York state labor law claims. The advancement of Plaintiffs claims would expose the inhumane cruelty and greed underlying the case in Yeend, and their novel approaches could serve as a basis for further litigation vindicating the rights of incarcerated immigrant-workers across the country. Attorneys and activists interested in defending immigrant-detainees and advancing their rights should take note of this recent development and advance similar litigation in other jurisdictions.

With assistance from Dr. Alana Slavin, a Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellow at the UCLA Semel Institute, previously trained at Yale New Haven Hospital and the University of Michigan. Her work centers on community advocacy, anti-eugenic pedagogy, and mental health equity.

Footnotes:

[1] Yeend v. Akima Glob. Servs., LLC, No. 1:20-CV-1281, 2021 LX 70503 (N.D.N.Y. Aug. 23, 2021), appeal docketed, No. 25-1455 (2nd Cir. June 10, 2025)

[2] Nwauzor v. GEO Grp. Inc, 127 F.4th 750 (9th Cir. 2025) (sending case back to district court where bench and jury trials ultimately resulted in defendant liability of more than $23 million in damages and subsequently appealed); Barrientos v. CoreCivic, Inc., 951 F.3d 1269 (11th Cir. 2020); Menocal v. GEO Grp., Inc., 635 F. Supp. 3d 1151 (D. Colo. 2022). 

[3] See Nwauzor v. GEO Grp. Inc, 127 F.4th 750, 770-71 (9th Cir. 2025) (“[Defendant’s] contract with ICE does not forbid [defendant] to comply with Washington’s MWA . . . [and] even if the contract did not require [defendant] to pay its detainees in accordance with Washington’s MWA, there is nothing in the contract that would forbid [defendant] to do so.”)  (rejecting defendant’s derivative sovereign immunity argument by majority of divided appellate panel); Menocal, 635 F. Supp. 3d at 1177 (“Because [defendant] was not complying with any federal direction or contractual requirement to compensate VWP participants $1.00 per day and no more, but was instead exercising its discretion, [defendant] cannot escape liability on the grounds that it is immune from suit.”) (finding that defendant contractor had not established entitlement to derivative sovereign immunity and denying defendant’s motion for summary judgment on TVPRA and unjust enrichment claims by federal immigration detainees), aff’d, 2024 WL 4544184 (10th Cir. Oct. 22, 2024); Novoa v. GEO Grp., Inc., No. 17-cv-2514, 2022 WL 2189626, at *20 (C.D. Cal. Jan. 25, 2022) (citations omitted) (“[Defendant] has not shown that ICE directed it to pay VWP participants only $1 per day. . . . The Court thus rejects [defendant]’s claims that its challenged actions were directed by the Federal Government.”) (finding that defendant contractor had not established entitlement to derivative sovereign immunity and denying defendant’s motion for summary judgment on, inter alia, TVPRA, unjust enrichment, and state minimum wage claims by federal immigration detainees); Washington v. GEO Grp., Inc., No. 17-cv-05806, Dkt. No. 288, slip op. at 9 (W.D. Wash. Aug. 8, 2019) (“[Defendant]’s motion for summary judgment, based on derivative sovereign immunity should be denied. [Defendant] has not shown that it was directed to pay participants in the VWP only a $1 for the relevant period.”) (finding that defendant contractor had not established entitlement to derivative sovereign immunity and denying defendant’s motion to dismiss state minimum wage and unjust enrichment claims arising from its administration of a VWP), reconsideration denied, 2020 WL 1955558 at *4 (W.D. Wash. Apr. 23, 2020); see also Nwauzor, 127 F.4th at 771 (“The contract sets a minimum compensation of $1 per day, but it does not forbid payments in excess of that amount. . . . [Defendant] could equally well have chosen, consistent with the contract, to exceed that amount by paying workers Washington’s minimum wage.”).