LoaderSave StorySave this storyCommentLoaderSave StorySave this storyUS Immigration and Customs Enforcement is moving to place its private detention network beyond the reach of state inspectors, publishing draft contract terms that declare state and local laws “shall not apply” to the facilities, according to federal documents reviewed by WIRED.
The new terms were published earlier this month, a day after a federal judge ruled that a contract cannot override state law and ordered ICE’s largest Pacific Northwest detention center opened to Washington health officials.
The ruling, by US District Judge Benjamin Settle, came only after three years of litigation; 10 refused inspections, according to the state; and 3,500 detainee complaints. A Ninth Circuit judge temporarily paused the order on July 21, with a decision on a longer stay expected in early August.
Settle ordered the operator of Tacoma’s immigration detention center to admit Washington state health inspectors, ruling that nothing in the company's federal contract barred them and that no contract could override state law in any case. The next morning, on July 10, ICE published draft contract terms for 5,500 detention beds in four regions of the country—including language declaring that state and local laws “shall not apply” to the facilities' operations.
Settle found that the GEO Group, the private prison company that owns the Tacoma facility, had executed a new contract with ICE in the middle of the lawsuit to support the company’s claim that ICE, not GEO, controlled access to the building. “Preemption requires Congressional intent, not a contract,” Settle responded, “and GEO's new contract cannot preempt state law, even if it purports to.”
Settle also noted that GEO's court filing omitted part of a contract provision under which ICE agreed to ask the Justice Department to get GEO dismissed from lawsuits over its performance, or to have ICE substituted as the defendant.
The new procurement document, posted to a federal contracting site on July 10 and first reported by the newsletter Project Salt Box, is framed as an early step toward a competitive bidding process, but its terms suggest otherwise. Facilities must begin housing detainees within 30 days of an award—a timeline no new construction could meet—and the required bed counts and locations align with four detention centers GEO already operates: in Tacoma; Aurora, Colorado; Pompano Beach, Florida; and Philipsburg, Pennsylvania.
The Florida requirement, 700 beds, matches the Pompano Beach facility’s contracted bed guarantee exactly, according to ICE's own facilities data. Operating agreements for the four sites lapse in the coming months: Tacoma's contract runs through October 27, and the Pennsylvania facility's county agreement expires September 28. GEO’s securities filings show the Colorado and Florida contract terms end in October and September, respectively.
Companies had less than a week to respond before the window closed July 17.
The draft contract terms are new. But the language attempting to nullify state law is not: It appears nearly word for word in the Tacoma contract that GEO signed in March, in the middle of the lawsuit—the same contract Settle ruled “cannot preempt state law, even if it purports to.” ICE is now proposing to extend it to three more states.
Settle rejected the language once. But his ruling is preliminary, it binds no court outside Washington, and for ICE’s purposes it doesn’t need to survive. Washington needed three years of litigation to get inspectors to the door of one facility—and they are still outside, held off by a stay while GEO appeals. Written into contracts across four states, the same language could restart that fight in each of these locations at once.
DHS and GEO Group did not respond to a request for comment.
The Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, has already shown what the strategy looks like by other means: In California, San Diego County officials were blocked from inspecting the Otay Mesa Detention Center; the county sued, and a federal judge ordered access in June. Soon after, its operator, CoreCivic, announced it sold the building and a second California facility to DHS for $1.5 billion.
A DHS spokesperson, Lauren Bis, tied the purchase to the state’s “sanctuary politicians,” who she said “continue to push legislation to outlaw or make private prisons financially infeasible.”
CoreCivic said it has completed the sale of the California City Detention Facility and Otay Mesa Detention Center to the federal government. The company said the valuations were set by independent appraisers through the government's required appraisal process.
The draft terms ICE posted this month could also shift three of the GEO facilities in Colorado, Florida, and Pennsylvania to the National Detention Standards (NDS) ICE issued in June—a rulebook the agency claims will “reduce the burden” on its contractors.
ICE records show three of the four facilities were most recently inspected under the stricter 2011 performance-based standards. The fourth—Tacoma—was reinspected in June under the weaker NDS after its new contract took effect, according to ICE's latest facilities data.
The new standards bar operators from paying detainees more than $1 a day for “voluntary work” and state that participants are not employees entitled to wages or benefits, permit AI translation tools for “non-critical” communication with detainees, and bar operators from refusing anyone ICE assigns to a detention center, with exceptions only at ICE's discretion. Under the draft contract, external inspections are limited to ICE, ICE-approved third party inspectors, and other federal officials, and facilities may operate indefinitely at 85 percent staffing, including medical staff.
The Washington ruling caps years of refused inspections. State health officials, responding to thousands of detainee complaints, were turned away from the Tacoma facility repeatedly; two people have died there since 2024, according to the state. (Settle’s injunction only applies to the GEO-run portions of the detention center and does not reach the parts of the facility ICE controls directly, including its administrative offices and the medical unit.)
In June, an inspection by ICE's own detention oversight office found a detainee whose required health assessment came 22 days late and several suicide-watch welfare checks that ran up to nearly 14 hours apart instead of the required eight. The same inspection surfaced an allegation, now under internal ICE investigation, that medical staff assaulted a detainee during a seizure.
In Pennsylvania, the new contract structure would have an additional effect: ICE's largest Northeast detention center, in Clearfield County, operates through a county agreement expiring September 28—a renewal residents have packed public meetings to oppose. A direct federal contract would cut the county out of the arrangement.
