Let me tell you something. When one of my kids gets caught doing something they shouldn’t, they don’t get to write a note that says “Mom’s rules shall not apply to this bedroom.” That wouldn’t fly in my house, and it shouldn’t fly in a country that supposedly runs on laws. But that is exactly what ICE just did.
On July 9, a federal judge named Benjamin Settle in Washington state ruled that ICE’s private prison contractor, the GEO Group, could not use a federal contract to block state health inspectors from walking into the Tacoma detention center. Three years of litigation. Ten refused inspections. Three thousand five hundred detainee complaints. Two people dead since 2024. And the judge said the obvious: a contract is not a magic wand. “Preemption requires Congressional intent, not a contract,” he wrote. Common sense, right?
Mathew Benjamin Brady / Levin Corbin Handy (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsThe very next morning, ICE published new draft contract terms for 5,500 detention beds across four states. And right there in the language, plain as day: state and local laws “shall not apply” to the facilities’ operations. They literally wrote the thing the judge had just told them they couldn’t write. The day after. I don’t know about you, but in my house that’s called defiance. In Washington, apparently it’s called procurement.
Here’s what really got me. The judge found that GEO Group signed a brand-new contract with ICE in the middle of the lawsuit, basically so they could argue that ICE, not GEO, controlled who gets in the door. They rewrote the paperwork to dodge the inspection. And the judge caught them. He also noted that GEO’s court filing conveniently left out the part of the contract where ICE agreed to ask the Justice Department to get GEO dismissed from lawsuits over its own performance. So a private prison company, holding people for the federal government, tried to make itself legally untouchable. While the lawsuit was still going on. And nobody at ICE thought that was a problem.
Now ICE wants to take that same “shall not apply” language and paste it into contracts for facilities in Colorado, Florida, and Pennsylvania. The draft terms require facilities to start housing detainees within 30 days of getting the contract. You know what you can’t build in 30 days? A building. You know what you can do in 30 days? Hand the keys to the same GEO Group facilities that are already there. The bed counts and locations match GEO’s existing sites almost exactly. Companies had less than a week to respond before the window closed on July 17. This wasn’t a competitive bidding process. This was a ribbon on a gift.
Héctor Berganza / PexelsAnd while all this was happening, the Department of Homeland Security bought two CoreCivic detention facilities in California for $1.5 billion. That came right after San Diego County officials were blocked from inspecting one of them, sued, and won access in June. CoreCivic sold the buildings to the federal government. A DHS spokesperson blamed “sanctuary politicians” for making private prisons “financially infeasible.” So when states try to hold these places accountable, the feds just buy the building outright and say your laws don’t reach us anymore.
ICE’s own inspection in June found a detainee whose health assessment came 22 days late. Suicide-watch welfare checks running 14 hours apart when they’re supposed to be every eight. An allegation, now under internal investigation, that medical staff assaulted a detainee during a seizure. The new standards ICE issued in June? They cap detainee pay at $1 a day. They allow AI translation for “non-critical” communication. They say facilities can run indefinitely at 85 percent staffing, including doctors and nurses.
Maximilianovich / PixabayI have four kids. I’ve been to enough school meetings to know what it looks like when somebody in charge doesn’t want you asking questions. The dodging, the paperwork shuffling, the new rule that shows up the morning after somebody told them no. I’ve seen it at the principal’s office. I did not expect to see it from a federal agency with 5,500 human beings in its custody.
A Ninth Circuit judge paused Settle’s order on July 21. A longer stay decision is expected in early August. Washington spent three years fighting to get inspectors through one door. ICE is betting that if they write “shall not apply” into enough contracts, every state will have to start that fight from scratch.
So I have a question for the manager. Actually, I have several. But I’ll start with the one every parent in this country should be asking: since when does a contract override a law? And who exactly do these people think they’re accountable to?