ICE's New Northwest Detention Center Contract Lowers Standards, Accountability

The GEO Group is back in the news, with the release of the latest in a series of reports documenting the unhealthy and inhumane conditions inside their Tacoma immigration detention facility, a new federal contract lowering protections for detainees, and a new lawsuit Washington State is filing against the company.

At the end of April, Governor Bob Ferguson and Attorney General Nick Brown announced they were taking legal action against GEO Group, the operator of the Northwest ICE Processing Center, colloquially known as the Northwest Detention Center, a private, for-profit detention facility in Tacoma.

Meanwhile, the University of Washington Center for Human Rights (UWCHR) released their newest report on the facility, attesting to insufficient internal response to reports of sexual abuse and assault inside the facility. The report also finds that the new seven-month contract extension between GEO Group and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) both lowers the standards for conditions inside the facility and decreases GEO Group’s accountability for what goes on inside.

Last week, Brown filed a motion in federal court to stop the GEO Group from blocking state health and safety inspectors from accessing the Tacoma detention facility. Inspectors from the state Department of Health (DOH) have been turned away from the facility on 10 separate occasions, in spite of state law giving them the legal right to enter.

https://www.theurbanist.org/ices-new-northwest-detention-center-contract-lowers-standards-accountability/