by Jake Goldstein-Street, Washington State Standard
August 13, 2025
A federal appeals court on Wednesday refused to give the operator of the immigrant detention center in Tacoma another chance to make its case for paying detainees as little as $1 per day.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the request from The GEO Group, the for-profit company that runs the facility, to reconsider its decision from earlier this year, siding with lower courts that found GEO violated state minimum wage law.
The decision affirms that the Florida-based GEO Group will need to pay more than $23 million that a jury and federal judge previously awarded. The next step in the company’s fight could be the U.S. Supreme Court. The case, brought by detainees and the state of Washington, has been ongoing since 2017.
GEO Group has run the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma since 2005. Its current contract with the federal government, signed in 2015, awarded the company at least $700 million to operate the facility over the following decade. The facility holds people detained by federal immigration enforcement on civil violations as they await potential deportation or release back into the United States.
The company used to run a voluntary work program for detainees. For years, hundreds at the Tacoma detention center were paid $1 per day, the minimum federal pay required in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities. When necessary to attract workers, pay would go up to $5.
The program allowed GEO to avoid hiring 85 full-time employees, according to court filings. The detainees would cook and serve food, wash dishes, do laundry and clean the facility.
GEO’s federal contract requires it to comply with “all applicable federal, state, and local laws and standards,” including “labor laws and codes.” This includes state minimum wage laws, courts have ruled.
The company had argued federal contractors couldn’t be forced to pay Washington’s minimum wage under the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution, which holds that federal law takes precedence over state law.
GEO contended Washington can’t regulate the detention center differently than similar state facilities, since the state’s minimum wage law exempts prisons and jails.
A U.S. District Court jury in 2021 found GEO Group violated Washington’s minimum wage statute, and awarded nearly $17.3 million in back wages. A federal judge ordered the company to pay the state an additional $5.9 million in penalties. The work program has been suspended since then.
Between 2010 and 2018, GEO made around $20 million per year running the 1,575-bed detention center.
Washington’s state Supreme Court also sided with the detainees and the state, finding in 2023 that the detained workers should be considered employees.
On this go-around, GEO asked the original three-judge 9th Circuit panel either to rehear the case or send it to the full appeals court in what is known as a rehearing en banc. The Trump administration’s Department of Justice also urged the court to reconsider. The court denied the requests Wednesday.
Dissenting from the decision, Judge Patrick Bumatay, an appointee of President Donald Trump, wrote that “the effect of this decision will be widespread.”
“Our court provides a ‘roadmap’ for States seeking to undermine federal policies with which they disagree,” Bumatay wrote. “Our court’s message is clear: So long as States focus their regulation on federal government contractors — rather than on the federal government itself — the States may frustrate the performance of any federal government activities they wish.”
Chief Judge Mary Murguia, who President Barack Obama appointed, disagreed. She wrote that Bumatay equating the federal government and its contractors is “contrary to long-settled black letter law.”
“Adoption of his position would allow any government contractor to refuse to pay state-mandated minimum wage to its employees,” she continued. “For example, any defense contractor could refuse to pay minimum wage. No one in this case, not even GEO, has suggested that this is the law.”
Washington’s attorney general’s office applauded the court’s decision.
“The Ninth Circuit majority got it right the first time, and we’re pleased the full court denied en banc review,” spokesperson Mike Faulk said in an email. “The GEO Group is a hugely profitable company that chooses to do business in Washington, where our wage laws apply to them the same as any other private business.”
The facility, the only private, for-profit detention center in Washington, has a history of allegations of human rights violations. It has come under renewed scrutiny as more detainees have been sent there with Trump’s return to office.
The Legislature has long had the detention center in its sights. Lawmakers tried to get it shut down in 2021 through a state law that was later deemed unenforceable.
Washington has also been ensconced in years of legal back-and-forth with GEO over state laws calling for greater oversight of the facility. Another court case tackling that issue is currently awaiting a ruling from the 9th Circuit.
GEO didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
This story has been updated to include comment from the Washington attorney general’s office.
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