GEO ordered to pay $23.2M in detainee minimum wage cases

SEATTLE (AP) — A private prison company has been ordered to pay more than $23 million over lawsuits that accused it of running its for-profit immigration lockup in Washington state on the backs of detainees.

U.S. District Judge Robert Bryan on Tuesday ordered GEO Group to turn over $5.9 million in profits to Washington state. Bryan said that's how much the company unjustly enriched itself since 2005 by paying detainees who volunteered to perform tasks like cooking and cleaning just $1 a day, instead of the state minimum wage.

The ruling came just days after a jury on Friday ordered the company to pay $17.3 million in back wages to more than 10,000 detainees and former detainees of the Northwest detention center in Tacoma.

“This is a landmark victory for workers’ rights and basic human dignity,” Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a written statement.

GEO is expected to appeal. The company, which did not return emails from The Associated Press seeking comment, has received permission from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to halt the detainee work program pending any appeal, court documents show.

Ferguson, a Democrat, sued the Florida-based GEO Group in 2017, saying the company had unjustly profited by running the Voluntary Work Program at the detention center. Local workers would otherwise have been hired to perform the jobs that went to the detainees, he said.

Private attorneys also filed a separate lawsuit on behalf of the detainees that year, seeking back pay. The judge, who rejected several attempts by GEO to dismiss the lawsuits, consolidated the cases for trial.

The first trial ended in June with a deadlocked jury. The second trial ended last week with jurors deciding that GEO should have paid the state minimum wage — now $13.69 an hour —...