Florida-based GEO Group, the owners of a for-profit immigrant detention center in Tacoma, Washington, owes $17.3 million in back pay to detainee workers who were being paid $1 a day for work they were doing rather than the state's minimum wage, a federal jury has determined.
"This multibillion-dollar corporation illegally exploited the people it detains to line its own pockets," Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a statement after the ruling was reached late last week, The New York Times reported Sunday. "This victory sends a clear message: Washington will not tolerate corporations that get rich violating the rights of the people."
Ferguson filed the lawsuit against GEO Group in 2017. The company last year reported more than $2 billion in revenues, according to MarketWatch. It did not respond to The Times' request for comment.
However, GEO Group argued in its court findings that the state of Washington pays prisoners in its correction facilities less than the state minimum wage. It also argued that under state law, the immigrant detainees were not considered employees.
The company is expected to appeal the ruling, said Adam Berger, a lawyer representing current and former detainees in a class-action lawsuit against the company.
The detainees, mainly from Mexico and Central America, had been working at GEO Group's Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma since 2014.
Berger said more than 10,000 former and current detainees are eligible for back pay, with some to be awarded less than $20, but others getting more than $30,000. The average award will be about $1,700, he told the Times.
Some of the former detainees have since returned to their home countries, and may not get their money if they can't be found, said Berger.
The detainees generally did janitorial work, but some cooked more than 4,000 meals a day for fellow employees.
Berger said the detainees were being held while their immigration statuses were being determined and most were never convicted of a crime, and they were "deserving of fair pay for the work that they do keeping the facilities running.”
Goodluck Nwauzor, a former detainee from Nigeria who testified in the case, said that he worked for $1 a day cleaning showers in one of the units he shared with 60 other men. He was granted asylum in 2017 and commented that his heart was "filled with joy" at the ruling.
Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge Robert Bryan is expected to make a ruling this week determining how much the GEO Group owes the state of Washington for the unjust enrichment it earned by underpaying the detainee laborers, Ferguson said.
Erin Hatton, a professor of sociology and prison labor at the State University of New York at Buffalo, told the Times that the ruling points out that detention centers can't treat migrants as "prisoners and criminals" and use them for labor.
Such facilities don't force migrants to work, but they often believe they have no other choice because they need money to communicate with their families, to buy snacks or stamps, or for other matters, she said.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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