by Jake Goldstein-Street, Washington State Standard
February 19, 2025
The Washington attorney general’s office last week asked a federal appeals court to restore a state law regulating the federal immigrant detention center in Tacoma, calling conditions there “abhorrent.”
It was the latest chapter in a legal fight between Washington and the company operating the facility over whether the state should be able to conduct inspections and other oversight there. If the state succeeds in defending its law, it could provide a new degree of transparency and state-level regulation at the center, which is the largest immigrant detention site in the region.
At its core, the case is a test of state versus federal power — with the feds siding with the company and against the state even before President Donald Trump took office. The conflict is also playing out as Trump pushes for tougher immigration enforcement, which is already leading to rising numbers of people being held at facilities like the one in Tacoma.
Last March, a federal judge in Seattle partly blocked a 2023 state law, ruling it usurped federal authority and applied to just one facility: The GEO Group’s Northwest ICE Processing Center. As such, U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Settle determined parts of the law violated the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause by imposing an economic burden on GEO through health and safety standards that the state doesn’t apply to others.
“The Court will not permit the State to enforce unconstitutional laws so that it can seek to address the public policy concerns that gave rise to those laws,” Settle wrote in granting an injunction that halted enforcement of the law until the case is fully resolved.
The state appealed Settle’s ruling to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Last Friday, attorneys for the Washington attorney general’s office, GEO and the Department of Justice argued the case for 40 minutes in front of a panel of three appellate judges. In their questions, two of the three judges appeared to indicate agreement with the state’s arguments.
Marsha Chien, of the Washington state attorney general’s office, acknowledged the Tacoma facility was the “impetus” for the 2023 law, House Bill 1470.
“The fact that it only applies to GEO as a practical matter today is not enough for impermissible discrimination,” Chien argued.
The challenged law
The law seeks to implement numerous new regulations on the private detention center, run by Florida-based GEO. Among other requirements, it mandated the facility provide fresh fruits and vegetables, air conditioning and heat, free telecommunication services, weekly mental health evaluations and rooms with windows.
Failure to comply with the requirements could result in fines of $1,000 and $10,000 per violation, depending if the issue was negligence or intentional recklessness.
The law also required the state departments of Health and Labor and Industries to conduct routine, unannounced inspections of the for-profit detention center. Labor and Industries inspected the site last summer with authority under a separate state law, and found no violations.
Democratic lawmakers passed House Bill 1470 after the state had to abandon another law seeking to ban for-profit prisons. Appellate judges ruled a similar California law violated the supremacy clause.
GEO’s attorney, Dominic Draye, argued legislators passed the 2023 law to “circumvent” that ruling.
A proposal this year in Olympia seeks to amend the existing law further, by expanding the facilities that must meet the requirements to include all private detention centers, not just for-profit facilities. This definition would also include a juvenile detention facility near Spokane.
The arguments
The Constitution’s supremacy clause requires state law to treat federal contractors the same as similar facilities. GEO argues Washington’s law does not. This is one of the main areas the two sides are arguing over in the case.
Settle, in ruling against the state last year, said Washington’s law set stricter standards for the detention facility than it does for jails and prisons. Last week, Chien, the state’s lawyer, made the case that the HB 1470 is in line with rules for involuntary psychiatric treatment facilities, which she said provide a more apt comparison to the immigrant detention center.
Judge William Fletcher seemed sympathetic to the argument, indicating the detention center and psychiatric facilities that treat people committed involuntarily could be an “apples-to-apples” comparison. Both types of facilities hold people in civil, rather than criminal, proceedings.
Brad Hinshelwood, of the Department of Justice, countered that Settle got it right by comparing private detention centers and prisons, as they’re built similarly.
Many facility requirements in the 2023 law don’t yet apply to the detention center. They only apply for contracts signed after Jan. 1, 2023. GEO and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement last extended their contract in 2021. The agreement runs through this September.
Because of this, Settle dismissed GEO’s challenges to those specific provisions.
Fletcher doubted GEO could challenge other parts of the law because they are subject to state rulemaking that hasn’t happened yet.
Although Draye repeatedly cited the California case striking down the law seeking to ban for-profit prisons as a north star for why Washington’s law can’t stand, Judge Jacqueline Nguyen pushed back.
The judge said that the majority opinion in the California case “made it very clear that there is considerable room for states to enforce their generally applicable laws against federal contractors.”
And, Nguyen added, regulating health and safety is something that’s been well recognized as falling within a state’s powers.
The facility
The 1,575-bed detention center in Tacoma, one of the biggest of its kind in the country, houses both locals detained for deportation as well as people authorities take into custody at the southern border and transport to Washington.
Stays can range from a day to months or even years. In recent weeks, some of the flights bringing detainees to the facility have spiked in size as the Trump administration has attempted to ramp up deportations, advocates say.
Private prison companies expect to profit from Trump’s plans. In the past month, The GEO Group’s stock has more than doubled. And U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s nomination drew ire last month from immigrant advocacy groups who noted her past lobbying for the company.
The facility, formerly known as the Northwest Detention Center, has long faced scrutiny over alleged human rights violations.
The University of Washington Center for Human Rights has found widespread use of solitary confinement, chronically unsanitary conditions and staff mistreatment of migrants housed there. These conditions lead to a “neverending series of hunger strikes,” Chien told judges last week.
The three-judge panel didn’t indicate when it would issue a ruling.
Democratic presidents appointed the judges who heard Friday’s arguments. This is the same court that last month ruled GEO owed detainees over $23 million after paying them $1 a day for work in violation of state minimum wage law. Judge Fletcher wrote that opinion, while the other two judges in the case were different.
Earlier this month, GEO asked the 9th Circuit to rehear that case, Nwauzor v. The GEO Group.
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