Washington state health and workplace inspectors have repeatedly been denied entry to a for-profit federal immigration detention center in Tacoma, where detainees have filed hundreds of complaints over issues like neglected hygiene, poor food and inadequate medical care.
Inspectors attempted to enter the facility under House Bill 1470, a state law passed in 2023 that was meant to bring more state oversight to the Northwest ICE Processing Center. Detainees have held hunger strikes in protest of the facility’s conditions for at least a decade, including one late last year that stretched more than two weeks.
The GEO Group, the company running the facility under a contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said they denied entry to state officials in late 2023 at the direction of ICE. State officials said GEO Group told them they could not enter due to “litigation.”
“privately run immigration detention center” are words that should never be grouped in that order.
And if government officials are being denied entry, there is only one logical conclusion to that scenario, and it involves prison time for the people blocking the way, unless you’re saying you have no power over your own state.
Every time I see “company defies government, government rolls over and takes it” I get pushed ever closer to that guillotine lever.
Fuck you mean “privately run”, why is this a thing?
Capitalism…
And ice is in on it wtf?
Where there’s a government agency, there are contractors willing to do the job.
The company claims that fully complying with the state law would put it in breach of its contract to operate the facility, raising the prospect of $160 million in lost revenue. GEO also says that complying with HB 1470 would require building upgrades estimated to cost over $3 million, including a complete redesign of the heating, cooling and ventilation system at the detention center.
Fucking. Yikes.
This is the same place where the police killed an anarchist a few years back, after he tried to “burn the mothefucker down”. It’s a shame he didn’t succeed, clearly the place has just continued its horrible practices.
