The GEO Group, Inc. v. Alejandro Menocal, et al.

The Department of Homeland Security, through its agency, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is authorized to detain aliens the United States has placed into removal proceedings. 8 U.S.C. § 1226. To accomplish this mission, ICE uses a blended set of facilities: some are owned by the agency, and others are owned and operated by contractors. The GEO Group, Inc. (GEO) is a contractor that provides this service to ICE. All facilities, whether government-owned or contractorrun are required to meet ICE’s detention standards. The decision below affirms certification of two classes of ICE detainees, who are seeking monetary damages against GEO for administering ICE’s policies. The first class claims that ICE’s policy requiring detainees to occasionally clean their living areas, under the potential sanction of disciplinary segregation for refusing to do so, entitles them to damages and restitution under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), 18 U.S.C. § 1589(a). The second class claims that GEO was “unjustly enriched” by implementing ICE’s Voluntary Work Program (VWP). This class claims that, because detainees are compensated at the rate of $1 per day, they are entitled to restitution for unpaid wages. 1. Whether Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(3)’s requirement that common questions predominate over individual questions can be satisfied by a class-wide inference of causation based on circumstantial evidence that GEO caused detainees to labor solely “by means of” the threat of disciplinary sanctions, in violation of the TVPA, even though consent is a defense to TVPA liability and there are numerous other plausible reasons why (i)