The following editorial originally appeared in The Seattle Times:
The for-profit prison operator who runs Tacoma’s Northwest ICE Processing Center was recently ordered to pay $23 million for violating Washington’s minimum wage law. For more than 15 years, immigrant detainees were paid $1 a day for labor needed to help run the facility, including cooking, cleaning and laundry.
The court’s decision should put an end to this shameful practice.
“This multibillion-dollar corporation illegally exploited the people it detains to line its own pockets,” said state Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who filed the wage suit in 2017.
U.S. District Judge Robert Bryan determined Florida-based GEO Group must turn over $5.9 million to Washington in addition to the $17.3 million it must pay in back wages to more than 10,000 detainees.
The company claimed it could pay its captive population state prison-inmate wages, but while Washington’s minimum wage law exempts government-run detention facilities, it does not include any provision for private operators. People detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are held in civil, not criminal, custody as their cases wind through the immigration system.
Rather than increase the detainee’s pay, the GEO Group has reportedly halted the work program pending appeal. The unsurprisingly in-character move by the company has led to guards preparing food and cleaning being ignored or falling on detainees themselves.
“It got really gross — nobody cleaned anything,” Ivan Sanchez, a 34-year-old detainee, told The Associated Press. “The guards were saying it wasn’t their job to clean the toilets.”
Fortunately, time is running out for the GEO Group in Washington. The Legislature voted this year to ban most private detention facilities in the state, slating the detention center for closure in 2025, when its contract with the federal government ends. Good.
If the federal government won’t end its dependence on privately run immigration detention facilities and prisons — which invariably place profit over people with little public accountability — the state is right to step in.
The GEO Group has long denied any allegations of abuse or poor treatment of detainees at facilities under its control. However, activists and the Department of Homeland Security’s own internal watchdog have consistently cataloged instances of abuse and violations of detention standards within the system.
Most recently, a report by the University of Washington’s Center for Human Rights accused the Tacoma facility of operating a “secret prison within a prison,” subjecting detainees with mental health issues and protesters to prolonged solitary confinement.
While its departure can’t come soon enough, as long as GEO Group continues to operate in the state, it must follow the law and pay workers what they’re owed.
