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Judge: Prison company to pay Washington $4.5M in legal fees

Published 7:55 am Wednesday, December 15, 2021

FILE - In this file photo taken Sept. 10, 2019, workers are shown in the kitchen of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in Tacoma, Wash. during a media tour. Washington state's effort to force a privately run immigration jail to pay its detainees minimum wage for work they perform can continue, after all. U.S. District Judge Robert Bryan in Tacoma said last month that he intended to dismiss the case, and he invited state Attorney General Bob Ferguson and lawyers for the GEO Group, which runs the detention center, to comment on a proposed order he planned to file. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren,File)
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FILE - In this file photo taken Sept. 10, 2019, workers are shown in the kitchen of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in Tacoma, Wash. during a media tour. Washington state's effort to force a privately run immigration jail to pay its detainees minimum wage for work they perform can continue, after all. U.S. District Judge Robert Bryan in Tacoma said last month that he intended to dismiss the case, and he invited state Attorney General Bob Ferguson and lawyers for the GEO Group, which runs the detention center, to comment on a proposed order he planned to file. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren,File)
In this 2019 photo, workers are shown in the kitchen of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Tacoma. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren,File)

Associated Press

TACOMA — The private prison company The GEO Group has been ordered to pay the Washington state Attorney General’s Office 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.

A federal jury ruled in October that detainees held at the Northwest detention center are entitled to minimum wage for cooking, cleaning and other tasks, rather than $1 per day.

The company was ordered to pay former detainees as well as the state more than $23 million in all.

The judgments have been put on hold while GEO appeals, but in the meantime U.S. District Judge Robert Bryan on Tuesday awarded the state nearly $4.5 million in attorney fees.

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