18 U.S.C. § 1589 Reaches Counties: Civil Immigration Detainee Labor Cannot Be Coerced by Solitary Confinement
Introduction
In Aleksey Ruderman v. Kenosha County, Wisconsin, et al. (7th Cir. June 5, 2026), three civil immigration detainees
housed at the Kenosha County Jail alleged that the Jail required them to perform unpaid custodial work (e.g., cleaning and sweeping)
and coerced compliance through discipline, including loss of commissary or phone privileges and solitary confinement for up to ten days.
They sued under the forced-labor statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1589, invoking its civil cause of action, 18 U.S.C. § 1595.
The district court dismissed at the pleadings stage, reasoning that § 1589 is directed at “human trafficking” and cannot plausibly apply
to discipline within lawful custody. The Seventh Circuit vacated and remanded, holding that the statutory text governs and that the complaint
plausibly alleges a § 1589 violation.
Summary of the Opinion
The court (Easterbrook, J.) made three core moves:
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Text over umbrella purpose: § 1589 must be interpreted by its words, not by the broader title/purpose of the
Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000.
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Coverage of public entities: the term “Whoever” in § 1589 encompasses counties (“bod[ies] corporate”)
and thus can reach public jails, not only private detention contractors.
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Plausible coercion: threatening solitary confinement to induce civil detainees to work plausibly fits
§ 1589’s prohibited means, including threats of “physical restraint” and potentially abuse of law or legal process,
particularly where the County did not identify any statute or regulation authorizing compelled unpaid work by civil detainees.
The judgment was vacated and remanded. The court flagged (without deciding) the County’s argument that the statute is
unconstitutionally vague, directing the district court to consider it on remand.
Analysis
Precedents Cited
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Gonzalez v. CoreCivic, Inc., 986 F.3d 536 (5th Cir. 2021) and
Barrientos v. CoreCivic, Inc., 951 F.3d 1269 (11th Cir. 2020)
These decisions are central to the Seventh Circuit’s alignment with other circuits on the threshold question:
§ 1589 can apply to labor required of civil immigration detainees. The opinion notes that neither case produced a merits holding
that § 1589 was violated (both were remanded), but both reject the categorical view that civil detention is outside the statute’s reach.
The Seventh Circuit relied on them to avoid a circuit split and to reinforce that the statutory text is not confined to “trafficking”
in a narrow, colloquial sense.
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Burrell v. Staff, 60 F.4th 25, 39 (3d Cir. 2023)
Cited for the proposition that § 1589 is not limited to human trafficking. This supports the court’s methodological point:
statutory scope should be derived from enacted language, not assumed legislative “purpose” at a higher level of generality.
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Taylor v. Salvation Army, 110 F.4th 1017, 1032 (7th Cir. 2024)
Taylor provides the Seventh Circuit’s internal limiting principle: despite § 1589’s breadth, the court had already held that
convicted persons may be required to work (including in work-release) consistent with traditional penal practice and the
Thirteenth Amendment’s punishment-for-crime exception. Here, Taylor functions as both (i) a caution against literal overbreadth and
(ii) a doctrinal boundary: the plaintiffs are civil detainees, not convicted prisoners, so Taylor does not resolve the case
against them.
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Moor v. Alameda County, 411 U.S. 693, 718-21 (1973)
Used to establish that counties are treated as “citizens” for diversity jurisdiction—supporting the broader claim that counties are
juridical persons within federal statutory schemes.
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Monell v. New York City Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658, 690 (1978) and
Will v. Michigan Department of State Police, 491 U.S. 58 (1989)
Monell is invoked for the proposition that municipalities are “persons” subject to damages under § 1983, while Will contrasts that
states are not “persons” under § 1983. Together, they supply an interpretive analogy: if counties are “persons” elsewhere in federal
law, it is natural to read “whoever” in § 1589 to include them, absent an exclusion.
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Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U.S. 445 (1976)
Mentioned to situate the sovereign-immunity question: states might be reachable if Congress validly abrogated immunity under
§ 2 of the Thirteenth Amendment or § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. The court does not decide that issue because counties lack the
states’ sovereign immunity in the first place.
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Department of Agriculture v. Kirtz, 601 U.S. 42 (2024)
Cited to emphasize a separate interpretive question: whether “whoever” includes the national government. The court expressly reserves
that issue, underscoring that its holding is limited to counties/municipalities.
Legal Reasoning
1) Statutory text controls; “human trafficking” is not a narrowing canon.
The district court treated the TVPA’s overall title/purpose as limiting § 1589. The Seventh Circuit rejected that approach:
large enactments often contain provisions that do not “fit neatly under an umbrella title,” and interpretation must start with
“what [§ 1589] says.” The court thus framed the case as a straightforward application of § 1589’s elements—especially the prohibited means
and the statute’s own definitions.
2) “Whoever” in § 1589 includes counties (public jails).
Kenosha County argued that “whoever” does not cover public jails, distinguishing Gonzalez and Barrientos as involving
private facilities. The court rejected this by combining:
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Counties’ non-sovereign status: counties lack the sovereign immunity of states; Wisconsin counties are “bod[ies] corporate,
authorized to sue and be sued.”
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The Dictionary Act, 1 U.S.C. § 1: “person” and “whoever” include a broad list of entities; the word “include” signals a
non-exhaustive definition rather than an exclusion of municipalities.
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Analogies to federal statutory usage: Monell and Moor support treating counties like other juridical persons
in federal law.
The resulting holding is clear and precedential: § 1589’s “whoever” reaches counties, so a county jail can be a proper
defendant in a § 1589 / § 1595 civil action.
3) The complaint plausibly alleges prohibited coercion under § 1589.
Accepting the allegations as true at the pleadings stage, the court concluded the described threats are of the type § 1589 targets:
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Threats of “physical restraint” (§ 1589(a)(1)): solitary confinement is characterized as a form of physical restraint.
Conditioning avoidance of solitary confinement on performing labor plausibly falls within the statutory prohibition.
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“Abuse … of law or legal process” (§ 1589(a)(3), defined in § 1589(c)(1)): the definition focuses on using legal process
“for any purpose for which the law was not designed” to pressure a person. The court reasoned that when law authorizes compelled labor
(as may be true for convicted prisoners), requiring work is not “abuse.” But Kenosha County did not point to any legal authorization for
compelled unpaid work by civil detainees—and the federal contracts suggested only paid voluntary work was authorized.
4) Acknowledged limiting principles to avoid implausible breadth.
The opinion candidly recognizes that reading § 1589 at maximum breadth could unsettle ordinary practices—illustrated by the “opera singer”
hypothetical tied to threats of “financial harm.” The court’s approach is to:
- retain Taylor as a carve-out for punishment-for-crime labor; and
- treat ordinary market bargaining and contract consequences as outside the statute’s intended target, without needing to fully define the boundary here.
But the court drew a firm line for this case: civil detainees are “persons not subject to punishment”, and nothing in the
text or context of § 1589 permits forcing them to work under threat of solitary confinement or loss of outside contact.
Impact
The decision is likely to have significant effects in three areas:
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Municipal liability under § 1589 / § 1595: by holding “whoever” includes counties, the court removes a key jurisdictional/coverage
defense for public detention facilities in the Seventh Circuit and invites similar reasoning in other circuits.
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Work programs for civil detainees: facilities may need to shift from compelled “housekeeping” labor to clearly voluntary,
compensated work—particularly where the only written authorization is for paid work.
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Pleading and proof focus: future litigation will likely turn on (i) what consequences are imposed for refusal,
(ii) whether any statute/regulation authorizes compelled work for the specific detainee category, and (iii) whether the facility’s conduct
fits “physical restraint,” “serious harm,” or “abuse of law or legal process” under the statutory definitions.
The remand also signals that constitutional defenses (especially vagueness) are not foreclosed; they are merely deferred to the district court.
Complex Concepts Simplified
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Civil detainee vs. convicted prisoner: civil detainees are held for administrative/immigration purposes, not as punishment
after a criminal conviction. That distinction matters because compelled labor has historical acceptance as criminal punishment but is far
more suspect when imposed on non-punitive detainees.
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“Whoever” (statutory coverage): a broad word Congress uses to identify who can violate a law. The court held that it covers
counties—meaning a county government can be sued for damages under § 1595 if it violates § 1589.
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“Physical restraint”: limiting a person’s freedom of movement. The court treated solitary confinement as a form of physical
restraint for § 1589 purposes.
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“Abuse … of law or legal process”: using legal authority in a way it was not designed for, to pressure someone into working.
If the law authorizes compelled work for a class of people, requiring it may be lawful; if not, using disciplinary/legal mechanisms to
compel work can become “abuse.”
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Sovereign immunity: states often cannot be sued for damages without consent or valid congressional abrogation. Counties generally
do not share that immunity, which is why the court treated Kenosha County differently from a state agency.
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Vagueness: a statute may be unconstitutional if it is so unclear that people cannot reasonably understand what it forbids.
The Seventh Circuit did not decide this issue; it instructed the district court to address it first.
Conclusion
The Seventh Circuit’s opinion establishes that 18 U.S.C. § 1589 applies to counties and can reach coerced unpaid labor
imposed on civil immigration detainees, particularly where coercion includes threatened solitary confinement and where
the government identifies no legal authorization to compel the work. By rejecting a “human trafficking only” limitation and grounding the analysis
in statutory text and definitions, the decision strengthens § 1589 as a potential remedy against forced labor practices in civil detention settings,
while leaving room (on remand) for constitutional and merits-based constraints to be developed in the first instance.