The contract to run the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma is up for renewal this week.

As the current contract between ICE and the private prison company GEO Group expires, lawmakers are pushing for transparency after years of human rights concerns at the facility.

Both ICE and GEO Group declined to comment on the status of the contract. But in the company’s August earnings call, GEO Group Executive Chairman George Zoley told investors the future looks lucrative for immigrant lockup centers nationwide.

GEO Group expects to land additional contracts with ICE that are part of the $45 billion dollars Congress earmarked this year for expanding detention centers. That funding supports the Trump administration’s aim to house 100,000 people each year in immigration detention nationwide, and meet 1 million deportations annually.

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GEO Group executives told investors that over the summer months, the use of their ICE processing centers nationwide increased from housing 15,000 people nationwide to 20,000 nationwide.

In GEO Group’s last contract with ICE to run the Northwest ICE Processing Center, the private company was paid at least $700 million to run the facility for 10 years. That included providing 1,573 beds at the facility.

As immigration enforcement has ramped up this year, it’s unclear if the facility has reached capacity. Periodic reports from ICE indicate that it’s getting close, thus creating a need to expand — something GEO Group CEO David Donahue pointed out while citing capacity at the national level to investors.

“This census level represents the highest utilization of our contracted ICE facilities in our company’s history,” Donahue said during GEO Group’s August earnings call.

He added that the company “stand(s) ready to support ICE with any additional needs.”

Donahue also told investors the company is well-prepared to address the legal, medical, and dietary needs of detainees at its facilities.

However, there was no mention on the call of the repeated reports of meals arriving late for detainees, internal audits finding inadequate medical care because of staffing, or detainee’s reports of not having access to legal help.

A recent University of Washington human rights report found that despite documented failures to uphold contract standards, GEO Group has never been sanctioned by ICE.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Jayapal, D-Wash., flagged some of those concerns in a letter this week to the United States Government Accountability Office. In the letter, Jayapal asked the government’s highest oversight office to audit how ICE manages accountability for contractors failing to meet agreed upon standards.

U.S. Rep. Emily Randall, D-Wash., is on the Congressional Oversight Committee and represents the Tacoma district where the Northwest ICE Processing Center is located. She’s said she’s recently been denied entry into the facility, and her repeated requests to view a new contract for the facility have also been denied.

“It is unconscionable that they are continuing to operate in this way and not meet their own internal guidelines and redefine their own internal guidelines where it suits them,” Randall told KUOW.

The vast majority of people ICE has arrested during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown this year have no criminal convictions. As of the start of September, 71% of people held by ICE in detention nationwide have no criminal record at all, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which aggregates data for immigration detention centers nationwide.

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At the Northwest ICE Processing Center, the number of people who don’t have a criminal record is closer to 60%. But even for those who have convictions, many reflect minor offenses such as traffic violations, or decades-old convictions for which they’ve already been penalized.

The University of Washington’s Center for Human Rights also found that many Northwest ICE Processing Center detainees have been deported from the U.S. in “enforced disappearances,” in violation of international human rights laws for refugees and asylum-seekers. Some of these deportees have also alleged being tortured after being sent to a maximum security prison in El Salvador.

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For their part, GEO Group officials said the company will have to get creative to meet the Trump administration’s goal of housing 100,000 detainees annually.

“Up to 100,000 beds or more will likely require ICE to seek alternative solutions like temporary soft sided facilities, which we believe the administration is exploring, primarily on military bases or …state-provided sites in such states as Florida, Indiana, and Louisiana,” Zoley, GEO Group’s executive chairman, told investors in August.

Company officials also told investors they expect that mass surveillance, such as the ankle monitoring program GEO Group subsidiaries run for ICE, could play a bigger role in the future.

Gustavo Sagrero Álvarez is a reporter with KUOW. This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.

It is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit our journalism partnerships page.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/09/27/tacoma-ice-facility-geo-contract/