The Geo Group commercial prison company has increased due to President Donald Trump. Investors are making big rates on immigration detentions. The stock price doubled after the election.
But despite the growth of success, the $ 4 billion company continues to resist the need to pay more than $ 1 a day for cleaning where the government made them live.
The detained Center with 1575 geo beds launches for immigration and customs execution in Tacom, Washington, detained once prepared food, washed laundry and cleaned toilets, performing work, which will otherwise need 85 staff, the company estimates. The minimum wage of the state at the time amounted to $ 11 per hour. (Now it’s $ 16.66.
This year’s ge and Washington returned to court – for the third time – when the company tries to change the previous decision with the state. GEO brought to the contracts at the Tacoma facility until it was dispersed, not giving the detainees from paid work and from making money on the commissioners.
In the legal battle, national consequences, as the number of ice detained across the country increases to the highest level in five years. A The vast majority are conducted in private facilities that manage geo or corporate competitors such as Corecivic. If the next state minimum wage becomes the norm, Trump’s repression may cost the country even more than otherwise – if private isolators do not absorb the cost or decide to reduce the cleaning that Tacoma has already been accused of GEO.
Georg views the lawsuit as a fight for the powers of the federal government to pass the laws of the nation. Multiple The courts have decided The fact that the law on fair standards, which provides for the minimum wage does not apply to the detained migrants. Considered in the case of Tacoma is the minimum wage.
“Simply put, we believe that Washington has unconstitutionally violated the position of the United States Constitution,” George wrote in a press release.
The company did not respond to the PROPBLICA comment request. Ice and Corecivic refused to comment.
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The last legal volley of Geo came last month.
The panel of three judges in the Appeal Court of the 9th US recently confirmed the decrees of the lower courts. Geo had to pay the state minimum wage at the Tacoma facility. The companies were also ordered to transfer wages for earnings over $ 17 million, plus $ 6 million for “unfair enrichment”. Combined punishments amounted to less than 1 percent of the total GEO income in 2024.
Instead of paying, Geo appealed to the full 9 county rehearsal on February 6. In the news release, he promised to “actively pursue all available appeals.”
The point is not that Geo is not able to pay, the company made it clear the legal submission. Its gross profit from the Tacoma facility, called the North Western Center for Ice Treatment, amounted to about $ 20 million a year when Washington has filed a lawsuit. The company informed the judge in 2021 that he could “pay the courts twenty times”.
A real question is a precedent that can set the case. GEO, which manages 16 ice facilities across the country, faces similar judicial processes in California and Colorado. The California case, also up to the 9th chain, is waiting for the results of Washington. Colorado twists its way through the lower court.
It is expected that the geo, if necessary, will fight this case to the Supreme Court.
If, eventually, they are forced to pay a state minimum salary across the country, the company can decide to pay more detainees, or otherwise hire at the borders in all its places – any of which will potentially eat profits, shares and dividends.
The company can also try to review its long-term contracts with ICE for a higher level of compensation, Lauren-Brook Eisen, imprisonment expert, article for the Brest Justice Center.
Whether GEO can respond to a higher job, it costs another way. After the jury resolution against this in 2021 the company stopped Tacoma’s Program of voluntary workAs you know, not to pay the detainees there minimum wage. Some could no longer allow telephone call members. (For such detainees, the program was never completely voluntary. “I need money desperately,” one testified. “I have no choice.”
After a sudden stop, the Mexican detainee, the “really rough” institution said the Associated Press At the time. “Nobody cleaned anything.”
After all, Geo brought contracts.
Mike Folk, spokesman of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Washington, said the testimony in the issue of the minimum wage emphasizes the problem with the detained housing in private prisons: the motive of profit. GEO not only paid $ 1 a day for harvesting in the patch, but also in the budget less than $ 1 per meal that each detainee was eaten, one kitchen testified. “So, the food variety is unchanged,” Folk said about the detainee testimony. “He regularly chose grasshoppers/insects from food.”
For its part, Geington claims that Washington wants unfair – and hypocritical – to hold an Tacoma object to a standard that even state facilities should not meet. The company noted that the trial in the Washington law exempts state prisons from the minimum wage requirements, allowing the state to pay prisoners no more than $ 40 a week. The federal government, taking aside the geo, entered the same moment in the briefing “Friend of the Court” both under the first Trump administration and the Biden administration. The judge in a recent 9th decision did also disagree.
But for such public prisons with a private immigration facility, it is a comparison of “apples and oranges”, decided the 9th chain. Washington does not allow private companies to manage state prisons. And migrants are detained under civilian accusations, not as convicted criminals.
According to the judges, the GEO contract states that the prison campaign should adhere to “all suitable federal, state and local laws and standards”, including “labor laws and codes”. He also claims that Geo has to pay the detainees at least $ 1 a day for a voluntary work program. The federal government “made a purposeful choice to dictate the geography of the minimum rate,” – wrote the 9th chain in its last decision, but “it also made a purposeful choice not to dictate the maximum bet.”
According to Maro Mora Vilalpanda, the founder of the La Resistencia activists, the conditions in the commemoration deteriorate as the number of detainees increases. The group regularly contacts people inside the detention center.
Power service, Sea Villarpanda, decreases: “Dinner was 5. Then 6. Now it’s 9.”
The harvest also disappears, she said. Without the workforce of the detainee, external cleaners must do it all.
“But these people,” said Sea Vilalpanda, “I can’t keep up.
