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Judge: Prison company to pay Washington $4.5M in legal fees

A guard with the GEO Group sits at a desk in a housing area at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Tacoma during a media tour on Sept. 10, 2019. (Associated Press)
Associated Press

Associated Press

TACOMA – The private prison company The GEO Group has been ordered to pay the Washington state Attorney General’s Office nearly $4.5 million in legal fees after the state sued to force the company to pay detainees at its immigration lockup in Tacoma minimum wage for work they perform there.

A federal jury ruled in October that detainees held at the Northwest detention center are entitled to minimum wage for cooking, cleaning and other tasks, rather than $1 per day.

The company was ordered to pay former detainees as well as the state more than $23 million in all.

The judgments have been put on hold while GEO appeals, but in the meantime U.S. District Judge Robert Bryan on Tuesday awarded the state nearly $4.5 million in attorney fees.