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Anonymous ID: 804bbf Oct. 31, 2021, 1:06 a.m. No.14891760   🗄️.is đź”—kun

Jury: GEO Group owes immigrant detainees $17 million

 

https://www.columbian.com/news/2021/oct/30/jury-geo-group-owes-immigrant-detainees-17-million/

 

SEATTLE — A federal jury has determined that The GEO Group must pay nearly $17.3 million to immigration detainees who were paid $1 a day to perform tasks such as cooking and cleaning at the company’s for-profit detention center in Washington state.

 

Friday’s decision came two days after the same jury determined that the Florida-based company must pay its detainee workforce at the Tacoma facility minimum wage, The Seattle Times reported.

 

GEO may have to pay even more when a judge on Monday considers separate damages sought by state Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who had filed another lawsuit on behalf of detainees held since 2005. The two lawsuits were consolidated for the first phase of a trial, determining whether GEO was obligated to pay minimum wage.

 

Adam Berger, one of the attorneys representing detainees in the private lawsuit, said he and his colleagues had asked for $13.7 million, but the jury decided the immigrants were owed more. The award is expected to be divided among 10,000 people who were held at the facility since 2014.

 

“Immigrants held in GEO’s for-profit facilities are not criminals and should not be beholden to enriching the corporation’s bottom line,” Berger said in a statement. He added that if GEO appeals, no money will be distributed until that process is resolved.

 

GEO maintained that the detainees were not employees under the Washington Minimum Wage Act. Even if they were, the company said, it would be unlawfully discriminatory for Washington to require GEO to pay them minimum wage — now $13.69 an hour — when the state doesn’t pay minimum wage to inmates who work at its own prisons or other detention facilities.