Company halts work program instead of upping detainee pay

SEATTLE (AP) — Brazilian Jose Soares has been locked up in one of the United States' largest immigration detention centers for the past two years, passing much of his time cleaning bathrooms and buffing floors at a rate of $1 a day.

But last week, a federal jury ruled that Soares and other detainees who cook, clean, do laundry and cut hair at the for-profit lockup in Tacoma were entitled to Washington's minimum wage, $13.69 an hour. The multibillion-dollar company that owns the jail was ordered to pay more than $23 million in back pay and unjust profits to current and former detainees and to Washington state.

The guards, Soares said, then delivered a message: No more cleaning.

Rather than pay the detainees minimum wage, the Florida-based GEO Group suspended the Voluntary Work Program while it appeals.

Neither the company nor U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which contracts it to house the detainees, would answer questions from The Associated Press this week about the suspension.

Soares, two other detainees and activists who monitor the facility south of Seattle told the AP that much of the sanitation work they used to perform is no longer being done regularly.

“It got really gross — nobody cleaned anything,” Ivan Sanchez, a 34-year-old detainee from Jalisco, Mexico, said in a phone interview from the jail. “We pick up after ourselves, but nobody sweeps or mops. The guards were saying it wasn't their job to clean the toilets. ... It caused a lot of animosity between the detainees and the officers because of that.”

Further, they said, not being able to work makes it harder for detainees to buy extra food at the center's commissary, supplementing what they consider to be inadequate meals provided by GEO.

While detainees are looking forward to a potential...