• usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.mlOP
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    20 days ago

    From the above article

    The program has also been accused of being less than voluntary, as numerous firsthand accounts of being coerced or forced to work against their will have emerged from people detained inside ICE facilities. Allegations against the agency range from officers threatening retaliation if detainees refuse to work, to detainees receiving insufficient amounts of food and having to work to make money to buy additional food at the commissary.

      • usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.mlOP
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        20 days ago

        Because the 13th amendment has an explicit exception for prison slave labor baked into it. It’s not an accidental addition, and it wasn’t unnoticed either (it was very quickly used especially in the South after the 13th amendment was ratified)

        Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

        Some states have recently change their state constitutions to prohibit that within the state, but it’s still legal federally and in the vast majority of states

      • JigglySackles@lemmy.world
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        20 days ago

        Well the easy answer is because it’s not the land of the free.

        The more complicated answer involves explaining how it was only ever free to a select group of people. Suppose that’s still true. It’s just a narrower group than it used to be.