Northwest Detention Center

University researchers found detention staff threw balls of pepper spray and used other means of force against detainees, including those with mental illness. They found such incidents occurred on average once a month.

It’s been more than two years since families and friends have been able to visit loved ones in person at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Tacoma. ICE suspended visitations at all detention facilities in early 2020 and has kept that policy in place. Now, national and local immigrant rights groups have started to push back after visitations at federal and state prisons have largely resumed.

Ever since GEO Group, the private prison company that runs the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Tacoma, suspended its detainee worker program last month, some immigrants have been speaking out about conditions deteriorating.

The private prison company The GEO Group has been ordered to pay Washington state nearly $4.5 million in legal fees, after the state sued to force the company to pay detainees at its immigration lockup in Tacoma minimum wage for work they perform there.

The company that runs a for-profit immigration jail in Tacoma, has suspended its detainee work program, rather than pay the detainees minimum wage for cooking, cleaning and other tasks. A federal jury last week ruled that the GEO Group must pay the detainees minimum wage instead of $1 per day.

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 Tacoma on the backs of detainees.

Detainees who clean dishes, floors and do other work at Tacoma’s ICE detention center must be paid Washington state’s minimum wage. That’s according to ruling handed down Wednesday in federal court. GEO Group, the private prison company that runs the facility, had paid working detainees as little as $1 per day.

Earlier this year, Washington state banned private prisons. Since then, there’s been a lot of back and forth about exactly when the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Tacoma should shut down. A new court case could determine if the ICE facility must close its doors years before lawmakers expected.

An immigrant rights activist who had been facing deportation says she can now remain in the U.S., after the Department of Homeland Security agreed to drop her case. Maru Mora Villalpando, a Mexico City native who has been in the U.S. since 1996, said Tuesday that an immigration judge last week approved the decision.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, must test detainees for COVID-19 before they are transferred from the southern border to the detention center in Tacoma, a federal judge ruled this week.