Washington state is locked in a fight with GEO over this same issue: State Attorney General Bob Ferguson sued the company in September, alleging GEO's $1-per-day wages at a 1,575-bed facility in Tacoma violate the state's $11-per-hour minimum-wage law. Typically, minimum-wage laws don't apply to prison facilities, but Ferguson argues that because GEO is a private company holding people on civil rather than criminal charges, the wage floor should apply.
According to the lawsuit, Novoa, the California inmate, was detained at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center northeast of Los Angeles in San Bernardino County, which began housing detainees in 2011. Since then, the suit says, more than 73,000 people have passed through the facility in government custody. It has been cited in the past for a series of problems, including accusations of inadequate medical care so pronounced that more than 24 members of Congress wrote a letter expressing concerns about neglect at the facility in 2015. This year, the Detention Watch Network, a group of civil rights advocates, labeled Adelanto the "deadliest" ICE detention center of 2017.
In the meantime, Novoa's suit claims GEO is using forced inmate labor to "clean, maintain, and operate" the facility through its Voluntary Work Program, which is anything but voluntary. Detainees scrub floors, clean windows, wash laundry, cut hair, and even perform clerical work for the GEO company for the can't-beat-it price of $1 per hour. Novoa claims GEO uses the work program to avoid paying union employees fair wages, and if inmates refuse to participate, they are sometimes thrown into solitary confinement.
