Judge: State can sue detention center over inmate pay

SEATTLE (AP) — Washington state can pursue its lawsuit seeking to force one of the nation's largest privately run immigration detention centers to pay minimum wage for work done by detainees, a federal judge in Tacoma ruled Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Robert Bryan denied the GEO Group's motion to dismiss the case. The for-profit company runs the Northwest Detention Center, a 1,575-bed facility in Tacoma where detainees are held pending deportation proceedings.

In a related case, Bryan also declined to dismiss a complaint by a former detainee named Chao Chen, who seeks class-action status — and back pay — on behalf of all Northwest Detention Center detainees who have performed work in the past three years.