Mistrial halts case on minimum wage for immigrant detainees

A trial over whether the GEO Group must pay minimum wage — instead of $1 a day — to immigration detainees who perform tasks like cooking and cleaning at its for-profit detention center in Washington state has ended with a hung jury

SEATTLE -- A trial over whether the GEO Group must pay minimum wage — instead of $1 a day — to immigration detainees who perform tasks like cooking and cleaning at its for-profit detention center in Washington state has ended with a hung jury. U.S. District Judge Robert Bryan in Tacoma declared a mistrial Thursday after the nine-person jury indicated they could not reach unanimous agreement following a two-week trial and about two days of deliberation. “Nobody's happy, but nobody lost,” Bryan told the attorneys afterward. Democratic Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson sued the Florida-based GEO Group in 2017, saying the company had unjustly profited by running the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma — now known as the Northwest ICE Processing Center — on the backs of captive workers.