More than 60,000 illegal aliens housed in a Colorado detention center are suing for forcing them to perform housekeeping chores. They allege the center compelled “forced labor” in violation of federal human trafficking laws. The defendant contractors say the claims are unprecedented.

The detainees sued for money damages and restitution.

The lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, Alejandro Menocal, stayed in the facility for three months while he was facing deportation. He said, “It’s their job to run the facility, and instead they used and abused us to run the facility, and that’s why we’re suing.”

Lawyers for the defendant says no other court has ever recognized trafficking or unjust enrichment claims for cleaning bathrooms, serving meals, doing laundry, and performing other housekeeping duties. They write that in spite of this fact, the district court denied the company’s motion for an immediate appeal on the merits, “thereby shielding the merits from this Court’s review.” They assert, “Such unprecedented claims deserve extra vigilance to ensure that class certification based on them follows ‘rigorous analysis’.”

The contractor who operates the Colorado facility has filed court documents asking for permission to appeal the judge’s ruling that the illegal aliens can proceed as a class action.

Lawyers for GEO Group, Inc. (GEO) write that the district court’s class certification “presents legally unsettled issues of national importance and manifest errors that warrant immediate review.” They ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit to decide whether the federal district court properly certified classes authorizing an alleged 60,000 immigration detainees to seek monetary relief.

In particular, the defendant-petitioner asks the Tenth Circuit to determine:

(1) Does a contractor operating a detention facility for the federal government compel ‘forced labor’ in violation of a federal human trafficking statute by requiring detainees to periodically perform housekeeping chores, when that contractor and its housekeeping policies are subject to extensive federal contractual and regulatory requirements as well as direct federal supervision, and the housekeeping policy is both longstanding and judicially-accepted? (2) Is the contractor ‘unjustly enriched,’ and required to pay restitution to detainees for the detainees’ participation in a federally-created, sponsored and supervised voluntary work program, when the settled expectation for decades has been that participants are provided a daily allowance of $1?