Immigration facility can’t pay detainees $1 a day for labor, WA Supreme Court rules

A private company that runs a federal immigration detention center in Tacoma violated state law when it paid detainees $1 a day for their labor, according to an opinion the Washington state Supreme Court issued Thursday.

The court, in a unanimous opinion, determined that detainees who participated in a voluntary work program at the facility are protected by Washington’s Minimum Wage Act. Florida-based company The GEO Group operates the site – known as the Northwest ICE Processing Center, or Northwest Detention Center – under a contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Washington state and detainees at the facility separately sued GEO in 2017, alleging the company violated the minimum wage law.

In federal district court, a jury sided with the state and the detainees.

The company was ordered to pay the detainees about $17.3 million in back pay, along with a $5.9 million award to the state. The court also blocked GEO from continuing the work program unless it complied with the minimum wage law.

GEO appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That court turned to Washington’s Supreme Court to weigh in on three questions central to the case, including whether the minimum wage law applied to privately run detention centers.

Under ICE’s contract with GEO, the company is required to provide detainees with certain “core services,” including food, laundry, cleaning and barbering. Detainees were performing some of this work, even though they weren’t supposed to based on the contract terms, according to earlier court proceedings.

“Civil detainees being held at NWIPC essentially run the facility,” said ACLU Washington, who filed an amicus brief with the state Supreme Court in support of the plaintiffs.

A dollar a day is the minimum federal pay requirement for voluntary work programs in ICE facilities. But GEO’s contract with ICE stipulates that it must comply with state and local laws.

GEO contended that it qualified for an exemption in Washington’s minimum wage law that covers “any resident, inmate, or patient of a state, county, or municipal” corrections or detention facility.

The justices rejected that argument, ruling that the carveout did not apply to detained workers at private facilities – even if the sites are operated under state or federal contracts.

“If the legislature intended to also exclude persons detained in private institutions, it would have done so explicitly,” Associate Chief Justice Charles W. Johnson wrote in the opinion.

The court also concluded that detained workers at the facility are considered employees under the Minimum Wage Act.

GEO argued an exemption for workers who “reside or sleep” in their place of employment as part of their job should apply. But the court was unpersuaded.

“The detained workers are in the custody of ICE and are not permitted to leave the detention facility until ordered released or removed. It is their detention that requires them to sleep or reside at the NWIPC, not their participation in the work program,” Johnson wrote.

The appeals court also asked the justices to weigh in on whether the award GEO was ordered to pay to the detainees would rule out the separate award to the state. They said it did not.

The opinion from the state Supreme Court on the three questions will be factored in as the federal appeals court moves ahead with the case.

In a statement to the Standard on Thursday, GEO said it is “disappointed that the Washington Supreme Court chose not to follow uniform precedent from courts all over the country holding that minimum wage laws do not apply to persons held in custodial detention facilities.”

Northwest Detention Center is the only privately-run, for-profit detention center in Washington. It’s also one of the largest detention centers of its kind in the country: Between Sept. 1, 2021, and Aug. 31, 2022, the facility had an average daily population of 374 detainees, with a maximum capacity of 1,575, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

The facility has a history of reported human rights violations, including allegations of medical neglect, reports of sexual assaults, and the use of tear gas. Detainees frequently go on hunger strikes to protest the center’s conditions.

The Legislature attempted to shut down the Northwest Detention Center in 2021, passing a law that would have closed the facility by 2025, but the state deemed it unenforceable after a court decision from last year barred a similar California law from going into effect.

Another state law approved this year was intended to give Washington Department of Health inspectors greater oversight of conditions in the facility, but The GEO Group has sued the state to stop enforcement of that law. Department of Health investigators have attempted to enter the facility but were turned away at least twice, according to court documents.

Washington currently does not require prisons to pay incarcerated workers minimum wage. Rep. Tarra Simmons, D-Kitsap, introduced a bill in the last legislative session to pay incarcerated workers minimum wage, but it stalled in committee.