Litigation grinds on over WA's power to regulate immigrant detention center

The Washington attorney general’s office last week asked a federal appeals court to restore a state law regulating the federal immigrant detention center in Tacoma, calling conditions there “abhorrent.”

It was the latest chapter in a legal fight between Washington and the company operating the facility over whether the state should be able to conduct inspections and other oversight there. If the state succeeds in defending its law, it could provide a new degree of transparency and state-level regulation at the center, which is the largest immigrant detention site in the region.

At its core, the case is a test of state versus federal power — with the feds siding with the company and against the state even before President Donald Trump took office. The conflict is also playing out as Trump pushes for tougher immigration enforcement, which is already leading to rising numbers of people being held at facilities like the one in Tacoma.

Last March, a federal judge in Seattle partly blocked a 2023 state law, ruling it usurped federal authority and applied to just one facility: The GEO Group’s Northwest ICE Processing Center. As such, U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Settle determined parts of the law violated the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause by imposing an economic burden on GEO through health and safety standards that the state doesn’t apply to others.

https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2025/02/19/litigation-grinds-on-over-was-power-to-regulate-immigrant-detention-center/