A landmark legal settlement in California has confirmed what rights advocates have long argued: immigrants working in detention facilities have rights, and they are entitled to workplace protections.

Announced Tuesday, immigration detention operator GEO Group—one of the largest private detention contractors in the US—agreed to pay more than $100,000 to settle a case brought by California’s workplace safety regulator, Cal/OSHA.

But even as the settlement was being signed back in May, GEO Group, the company at the center of the case, was quietly lobbying ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to undo that very principle.

A four-year fight for fundamental rights

The case began in 2022 after inspectors found detainees cleaning the Golden State Annex facility in McFarland lacked protective equipment, proper training, and adequate safeguards during the COVID-19 pandemic. Detainees reported wiping black mold from shower walls and breathing black dust from air vents while using cleaning products with no instructions.

GEO Group appealed, arguing detainees set their own schedules and therefore could not be considered employees. The state’s Occupational Safety and Health Appeals Board rejected that argument. GEO Group then sued but settled three days before the case was due in court.

Cal Matters reports:

It was the first known time the state has treated immigrant detainees as workers and their detention facility operators as employers subject to state labor laws.

Immigrants held in ICE custody are detained on civil violations, not imprisoned for crimes. But in detention, where they can participate in a “voluntary work program” cleaning the facility, preparing food or cutting other detainees’ hair, they are only paid $1 a day. Detainees often participate in order to afford food at the centers’ commissaries or calls to their families.

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