This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.
The private immigration detention company GEO Group has settled a landmark case over conditions in one of its Central Valley detention facilities. It has agreed to pay more than $100,000 over allegations the company failed to keep detained immigrants safe when they worked inside the facility.
The settlement, signed in May and announced Tuesday, is a victory for immigrants’ rights groups that have pushed California lawmakers to attempt to regulate conditions inside the federal government’s privately-operated detention facilities.
Eight such facilities now operate across the state and the number of detained immigrants has spiked during the second Trump presidency.
During the pandemic, lawmakers passed a measure allowing state inspectors into the facilities. In 2022, after receiving complaints from advocates and detained immigrants at the Golden State Annex facility in McFarland, state workplace safety inspectors from Cal/OSHA opened a case at the center and cited the GEO Group with workplace violations, alleging the company failed to prevent the spread of COVID-19 among detainees who work there, and ensure other safety measures.
It was the first known time any state has treated immigrant detainees as workers and their detention facility operators as employers subject to state labor law.
Immigrants held in ICE custody are detained on civil violations, not imprisoned for crimes. But in detention, where they can participate in a “voluntary work program” cleaning the facility, preparing food or cutting other detainees’ hair, they are only paid $1 a day. Detainees often participate in order to afford food at the centers’ commissaries or calls to their families.
As part of the settlement between GEO Group and Cal/OSHA, the company has agreed to improve its disease control plans for detainees and stopped fighting a ruling by state regulators last year that said the company was subject to state labor laws. The state will drop its citations. Neither GEO Group nor the state agency responded to requests for comment.
Detention facility operators and federal immigration officials have continued to clash with state and local regulators over conditions. Last month, a federal judge sided with San Diego County health officials and ordered the Department of Homeland Security and its contractor CoreCivic to allow a county inspector into the 1,400-bed Otay Mesa Detention Center near the Mexico border. That company last week sold the facility and another one in Kern County to the federal government, CalMatters reported.
And amid several federal lawsuits challenging the practice of paying just $1 a day for detainee work, GEO Group succeeded last month in getting ICE to update its standards for detention contractors, the Washington Post reported. The new standards state detainees “are not entitled to wages or benefits under applicable wage laws or labor regulations.”
