(Olympia, WA) Today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit sided with Attorney General Nick Brown, affirming decisions by a lower court and a jury that found the for-profit operator of the Northwest ICE Processing Center exploited detainee workers and unjustly enriched itself through unlawful labor practices.
Starting in 2005, The Geo Group financially benefitted from a work program that paid detainee workers $1 per day — far less than Washington’s minimum wage. Workers performed essential tasks for the detention center, such as doing laundry, preparing food and cleaning. The work included cooking and serving three meals a day, scrubbing showers and toilets, cleaning the walk-in oven, and buffing and waxing the floors in the middle of the night.
Today’s decision from the Ninth Circuit held that “GEO is a private for-profit employer” that operates the detention center “for its shareholders’ economic gain.” As the court explained, there is “nothing — either in federal law or in GEO’s contact with the federal government — that prevents GEO from paying Washington’s minimum wage to its civil detainees who perform work for the benefit of GEO.”
“For-profit businesses in Washington must all follow the same rule — if you employ workers, you must pay them fairly,” Brown said. “The appeals court today confirmed that companies that break our state laws will be held accountable.”
The Attorney General’s Wing Luke Civil Rights Division filed a lawsuit against GEO in September 2017. In 2021, a jury unanimously found GEO liable for violating Washington’s Minimum Wage Act and awarded $17.3 million to more than 10,000 individuals detained at the detention center to compensate them for back wages. In addition, a federal judge concluded that GEO unjustly enriched itself through use of the work program and ordered the company to pay the state $5.9 million.
Unjust enrichment is the increased value to GEO’s business generated from its unfair labor practices. For example, by pocketing the wages it did not pay over the years, GEO has had the benefit of that money for itself to invest in its business and pay its shareholders.
Today’s decision requires GEO to pay all its workers at least Washington’s minimum wage and pay the $23.2 million in judgments.
Deputy Solicitor General Marsha Chien, Assistant Attorneys General Andrea Brenneke and Lane Polozola, Investigator Alma Poletti, and Legal Assistants Caiti Hall and Anna Alfonso handled the case for the Attorney General’s Office.
The class of workers who recovered back wages are represented by Adam Berger, along with other partners at Schroeter Goldmark & Bender of Seattle, and Jennifer Bennett of Gupta Wessler.
GEO exploited detainee labor for essential jobs
GEO used immigrant detainee labor to perform virtually all non-security functions at Tacoma’s Northwest ICE Processing Center, formerly known as the Northwest Detention Center. Between 2005 and the jury’s verdict in 2021, GEO paid thousands of detainee workers each year $1 per day or, in some instances, extra food for labor that is necessary to keep the facility operational.
A class of more than 10,000 individuals who provided operational labor to the detention center for $1 per day also sued GEO for its labor practices. That private class action lawsuit was consolidated with the Attorney General’s lawsuit for trial.
Many of the detained immigrants, including lead class plaintiff Goodluck Nwauzor, were held at the facility while waiting on decisions in their immigration court cases. Nwauzor — a Nigerian-born asylum seeker — was granted asylum status in 2017 and lawful permanent residency after an eight-month detainment during which he worked for just $1 per day cleaning showers.
GEO’s practice also impacted employment opportunities for workers in the Tacoma-area community.
The Northwest ICE Processing Center and The GEO Group
Located on Tacoma’s Tideflats, the Northwest ICE Processing Center is the fourth-largest immigration detention center in the country. People are held at the facility while undergoing proceedings to determine their immigration status. Privately owned and operated by GEO, the Northwest ICE Processing Center has the capacity to house up to 1,575 immigrant detainees.
The Tacoma detention center has faced controversies, including two deaths in the last year, multiple hunger strikes by detainees over the dollar a day practice, living conditions, access to medical care and other problems at the facility. More recently, the detention center has been at the center of multiple lawsuits over state agency attempts to conduct basic health and safety inspections at the facility.
GEO, a Florida-based company, has owned and operated the facility since 2005. Its contract to operate the Northwest ICE Processing Center runs through 2025. At the time the contract was renewed, GEO projected the Tacoma detention center would bring in $57 million in revenue every year at full capacity.
The Wing Luke Civil Rights Division was created in 2015 to protect the rights of all Washington residents by enforcing state and federal anti-discrimination laws. Former Attorney General Bob Ferguson named the division for Wing Luke, who served as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Washington in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He went on to become the first person of color elected to the Seattle City Council and the first Asian American elected to public office in the Pacific Northwest.