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Detained immigrants work for a dollar a day at the Geo Group facility in the San Joaquin Valley. The company reached a settlement with the state after complaining about conditions at the center.
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Private immigration detention company GEO Group has settled a landmark case over conditions at one of its detention centers in the Central Valley. The company agreed to pay more than $100,000 over allegations that it failed to ensure the safety of immigrant detainees while they worked at the facility.
The agreement, signed in May and announced Tuesday, represents a victory for immigrant rights groups that have pressured California lawmakers to try to regulate conditions at private detention centers run by the federal government.
Eight of those centers now operate across the state, and the number of immigration detentions has skyrocketed during Trump’s second presidency.
During the pandemic, lawmakers passed a measure allowing state inspectors access to the facilities. In 2022, after receiving complaints from activists and immigrant detainees at the Golden State Annex facility in McFarland, state workplace safety inspectors from Cal/OSHA found a case at the facility and fined GEO Group for labor violations, alleging the company failed to prevent the spread of COVID-19 among detainees working there or provide other safety measures.
This is the first time there is evidence that The state treats detained immigrants as workers and the operators of their detention centers as employers subject to state labor laws.
Immigrants detained by ICE are arrested for civil violations, not crimes. However, in the detention centers, where they can participate in a volunteer work program to clean the premises, prepare meals or groom other detainees, they are paid only one dollar a day. Often they participate so they can buy food from the centers’ cash registers or call their families.
As part of the settlement between GEO Group and Cal/OSHA, the company pledged to improve its disease control plans for detainees and stopped challenging a ruling by state regulators last year that found the company subject to state labor laws. The state will withdraw the subpoenas. Neither GEO Group nor the state agency responded to requests for comment.
Detention center operators and federal immigration officials have continued lining a state and local regulators for conditions. Last month, a federal judge ruled in favor of San Diego County health officials and ordered the Department of Homeland Security and its contractor CoreCivic to allow a county inspector access to the 1,400-person Otay Mesa detention center near the Mexican border. As CalMatters reported, the company said last week sell the center and another in Kern County to the federal government.
And amid several federal lawsuits challenging the practice of paying detainees as little as $1 a day for labor, GEO Group last month succeeded in getting ICE to update its standards for detention contractors. as reported by the Washington Post . The new standards state that detainees “are not entitled to wages or benefits under applicable labor laws or wage regulations.”
