Washington Post:  “Goodluck Nwauzor fled Boko Haram militants in Nigeria only to end up cleaning showers for $1 a day while housed at one of the United States’ largest immigrant detention facilities.  Now his testimony has helped convince a federal jury that GEO Group, which runs the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Wash., violated the state’s minimum wage laws and owes thousands of immigrant detainees $17.3 million in backpay.

“’I feel so great, and I thank almighty God, who made it possible,’ Nwauzor told The Washington Post by phone Saturday.  ‘I really appreciate the jury’s decision.’  The decision on Friday means Nwauzor and roughly 10,000 other detainees will receive individual awards ranging from $7 for a single day worked, to more than $30,000 in the instance of a detainee who worked almost 700 days, according to Adam J. Berger of the Seattle-based Schroeter Goldmark & Benderorthat, the law firm representing Nwauzor and the other detainees.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Robert Bryan will decide how much money GEO Group must pay the state for unjust enrichment — a sum on top of the $17.3 million already ordered.  Nwauzor’s attorneys called the jury’s award “precedent-setting,” while labor experts said it could have wider implications. Erin Hutton, a University of Buffalo sociology professor who authored a book on coerced labor, said the jury’s award sends a strong message to corporations that labor protections extend to people in pretrial detention.