Washington Justice Secretary Bob Ferguson filed a lawsuit in 2017 against GEO Group, a Florida-based company. He accused the company of unfairly benefiting financially by running the Northwest detention center in Tacoma and exploiting detained migrants.

In the same year, a separate lawsuit was filed on behalf of the detained migrants and requiring arrears. Tacoma-based federal judge Robert Bryan, who rejected several GEO requests to dismiss the lawsuits, consolidated the cases for the trial, which he presided over via Zoom due to the pandemic.

"What GEO is doing to exploit captive workers at the Northwest detention center is real and on a huge scale," Assistant Attorney General Andrea Brenneke told the jury Tuesday during her closing arguments. "GEO could easily pay the minimum wage to detained workers and still earn millions of dollars from their facility each year."

The company responded that the detainees are not employees. Even if they were, the company says, it would be unlawfully discriminatory for the state to force GEO to pay them the minimum wage -- currently $13.69 an hour -- when Washington does not pay minimum wages to inmates working in the state's prisons and detention centers.

In her final argument, GEO attorney Joan Mell accused the state and pro-detainee activists of using the lawsuits to attack the immigration detention system. GEO has operated the detainee work program for more than a decade, and the state made no attempt to force the company to pay the minimum wage until 2017, amid a series of lawsuits filed by Ferguson against then-President Donald Trump's administration.

"If plaintiffs can prove that the Minimum Wage Act is -- and I quote -- applicable... then they can reform immigration detention without having to go to Congress," Mell said. "They're taking a shortcut through the courts to get what they want."

The Northwest detention center houses people who are in custody as the government completes its deportation proceedings or reviews their immigration status. It has capacity for 1,575 detainees, making it one of the largest immigration prisons in the country, although earlier this month it had just 216 people, largely due to the pandemic.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which pays GEO to run the center, requires the company to operate a "volunteer work program" to keep detainees busy. It requires that they be paid at least a dollar a day for their work, which includes cleaning toilets, showers and industrial kitchens; washing and folding of clothes; sweeping and moping floors; preparing and serving food; and cut hair.

Former detainers testified that they did the work because they needed the money to buy more food or clothing at the police station or to make phone calls to their loved ones.

Usually the shifts are only one or two hours. An analysis by GEO noted that if the detainees did not perform the work, they would have needed to hire 85 full-time workers from the community.

GEO's contract with ICE also requires it to comply with applicable local and state laws, which the state assures includes the Washington Minimum Wage Act.

Apparently, Washington is the only state to sue a private detention contractor for failing to pay minimum wages to detained migrants. However, similar lawsuits have been filed on behalf of migrants detained in other states, including New Mexico, Colorado and California, to try to force GEO and another major private detention company, CoreCivic, to pay the minimum wage to their prisoners.

Cases in Colorado and California remain pending, but a federal judge has dismissed the lawsuit filed by former defendants at CoreCivic'sCibola detention center in New Mexico, a decision that was upheld by a panel of a federal appeals court last March.

"Persons in custody -- such as appellants -- are not in an employer-employee relationship, but in a custodian-detained relationship," the panel wrote.

That's the basis of GEO's argument in the Washington case. The company acknowledges that it has money to pay the minimum wage to detainees if it wants to do so. In 2018, GEO earned $18.6 million from its facility; it would have cost him $3.4 million to pay the minimum wage to his detainees.

Mell also highlighted the clauses in GEO's contract with ICE that state that any employee who hires GEO must have legal status to work in the United States, and these prisoners do not. "The contract is clear: The detainees are not employees," Mell said. "They can't be."

But the definition of "employee" in Washington's minimum wage law is highly ambiguous: It includes anyone who is allowed to work by an employer, regardless of their immigration or legal status to perform work. The law states that residents of a "state, county, or municipal" detention center are not entitled to the minimum wage.

According to state and detainee attorneys, that exception does not include for-profit private prisons like GEO's. In addition, GEO oversaw shifts and job performance just as any employer would, they said.

In the event that the jury decides that minimum wage law applies to GEO, a second phase of the trial will be held to determine compensation. The jury did not reach a verdict on Tuesday; and will resume deliberation on Wednesday.

In a separate case, Washington intends to close the detention center in its entirety. A few months ago, Gov. Jay Inslee signed into law a law prohibiting the presence of for-profit detention centers in the state. GEO has filed a lawsuit to block that law.

• Corecivic Inc