Washington sues operator of immigration detention center

OLYMPIA – People being held at the federal immigration detention center in Tacoma are being paid as little as $1 a day or a few snacks by a Florida-based company to work around the facility, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said Wednesday.

They should be getting $11 an hour, the state minimum wage, or the company that operates the Northwest Detention Center should be hiring people outside its walls to do the work, Ferguson said.

Ferguson’s office filed a lawsuit in Pierce County Superior Court against the GEO Group, Inc., which owns and operates the detention center for the federal office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It accuses the company of violating state minimum wage laws since 2005 and profiting from those actions.

“This corporation is exploiting these workers for their profit,” Ferguson said at a press conference announcing the lawsuit.

GEO Group, in an email from its headquarters in Boca Raton, Florida, called the lawsuit “baseless and meritless” and said it intends to “vigorously” defend the company.

At issue is GEO’s use of detainees for nonsecurity jobs around the facility that includes work in the kitchens, laundry, maintenance and cleaning. The detainees may be in the center while awaiting a decision on deportation or the granting of asylum.

The state’s minimum wage law has very specific exemptions that allow for workers to be paid less, Ferguson said. A state, county or city operating a jail or a prison can pay inmates $1 a day for work details.

But GEO is a private, for-profit company, and the detainees at the center aren’t criminals or people facing criminal charges. They’re facing civil immigration proceedings.

“There is no exemption for a private, for-profit company,” Ferguson said. The detainees aren’t being paid cash, but instead get credit at the commissary for chips or snacks in lieu of the payment.

GEO contends that it isn’t covered by the state minimum wage law.

“The volunteer work program at all federal immigration facilities as well as the minimum wage rates and standards are set exclusively by the federal government,” the company’s email said. Those standards were issued by the Obama administration in 2011, it said.

Those standards, and the contract the company has with ICE, don’t get GEO out of following the state minimum wage law, Ferguson said. The lawsuit asks the court to order GEO to start paying current workers the minimum wage and give up profits it made over the years by underpaying past workers, money which would be placed in a trust to support people detained at the center and people in the surrounding community who may have lost employment opportunities because GEO was underpaying detainees.

ICE and the federal government are not named in the suit. Ferguson and attorneys from his office said the state has not contacted the federal government or GEO about its belief the company is violating state minimum wage laws.

The center can hold more than 1,500 detainees. It has been the site of some protests outside the facility, and detainees staged a hunger strike earlier this year.