Detainees file lawsuit against ICE, GEO Group, claiming harassment

Feb. 24—Detainees at two privately run immigration detention centers filed a class action lawsuit Friday against Immigration and Customs Enforcement and The GEO Group, which manages the two sites.

"We are hunger striking because we see the pain that everyone in here is going through," plaintiff Guillermo Medina Reyes was quoted as saying in a news release Friday. "When I look at everyone and how much they believe in the fact that putting themselves through this can make a change, it gives me hope."

The suit, filed in district court Thursday on behalf of the five plaintiffs by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, accuses ICE and GEO Group of punishment and harassment toward detainees at the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center in Bakersfield and Golden State Annex in McFarland.

According to the news release, guards have threatened detainees with solitary confinement and bans on family visitation and access to worship, among other forms of harassment.

"The people detained in these horrific detention centers have undeniable First Amendment rights to speak out against their abuse," said the attorneys in a joint statement. "ICE detains people indefinitely under hideous living conditions, including facilities rife with black mold, while GEO Group profits from their labor by paying workers in custody $1 a day. We will do everything possible to protect their constitutional right to peacefully protest the injustice of their detention."

This comes after a year of labor strikes which resulted in a separate suit over the center's "volunteer work program," which paid $1 a day for eight hours of janitorial work that often involved unsafe chemicals and no proper protection, according to Minju Cho, a staff attorney with American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California, which is representing the detainees.

Cho said that since the hunger strike started a week ago, the detainees haven't digested anything but "water and prescribed medications."

In their suit, the plaintiffs seek an immediate end to retaliation and improved living and working conditions, if not release from the detention center.

"They have a First Amendment right to peaceably protest and to petition the government for a redress of grievances," Cho said. "Because they have an expressive purpose."

When labor strikes began in April 2022 at Mesa Verde and in June at Golden State Annex, detainees simply refused to show up for their $1-a-day shifts.

"And if it were truly 'voluntary' then that would've been fine," Cho said. "But that's not what happened at all."

In response to detainees' most recent protest, Cho said, ICE and GEO Group have escalated retaliation, allegedly banning visitation, forbidding access to the library and chapel, and confiscating commissary items from the dormitories — even from those who haven't participated.

"Some strikers told us that guards would come in and leave the trays out for 20 minutes and tell them 'oh, doesn't it smell good,'" said Laura Bateman, a spokesperson for California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, which mediates between the detainees and the public.

Meanwhile, Cho said that GEO Group has not made any official response to the lawsuit filing.

"The hunger strikers have a very clear expressive purpose demanding immediate release," Cho said. "But if release is not possible, then improved treatment, along with respect and dignity by GEO and ICE as well."

According to Cho, ICE and GEO Group's longstanding argument for the program is based on a 1950 federal law that allows the U.S. government to pay noncitizens, held on immigration violations, for work performed.

"ICE has not deviated from that dollar a day, and it's not clear whether this is legal," Cho said.

Many states in recent years have contested the rule, and won. In November 2021, a federal jury in Washington ordered GEO Group to pay more than $23 million over similar lawsuits, saying that the $1 a day pay violated the state's minimum wage law. Cho said that a similar lawsuit is pending in California.

"I hope that it's challenged and found to be illegal," she said.

According to the news release, GEO Group made $26.7 million in profit between 2011 and 2019 from the two sites.

Representatives from GEO Group did not respond to requests for comment Friday, but earlier this week it denied allegations of a hunger strike, according to previous reports.

"Allegations such as these are part of a long-standing radical campaign to attack ICE's contractors, abolish ICE and end federal immigration detention by proxy in the state of California," Geo Group CEO Chris Ferreira wrote in a statement Wednesday. "This campaign is aided by media outlets that publish unsubstantiated claims as facts, no matter how preposterous."