The GEO Group will keep running the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington, for another decade. The company announced that it has entered into a new 10-year management contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for the facility, in Tacoma, about 30 miles south of Seattle, and that the contract is expected to generate approximately $140 million in annual revenues and continue through October 27, 2036.
Source: Business Wire / GEO Group
Federal procurement records tell the same story in a different currency. Reporting by Project Salt Box, based on SAM.gov contracting data, put the award at about $1.5 billion over its full term — broadly matching GEO's $140 million-a-year figure — and said ICE's detention compliance and removals office signed the contract on Wednesday, October 28, with work beginning the same day. ICE received one offer for the contract, the records show, and no money has been committed yet, because under this type of contract funds are committed through separate orders.
Source: Project Salt Box (SAM.gov records)
What the contract covers
Support services at the Northwest ICE Processing Center are expected to include security, maintenance and food services, as well as access to recreational amenities, medical care and transportation services, GEO said. Project Salt Box, reading the procurement record, described the scope in similar terms: detention, security, health care and transportation services at the facility, with orders allowed through October 27, 2036.
GEO's chairman, chief executive officer and founder, George C. Zoley, said in the company's statement: “The Northwest ICE Processing Center plays an important role in helping meet the need for federal immigration processing center bedspace. We are proud of our 40-year public-private partnership with ICE, and we stand ready to continue to assist the federal government in meeting its immigration enforcement priorities.”
Source: Business Wire / GEO Group
How Tacoma got here: a bridge contract, then a decade
The new contract follows a seven-month sole-source agreement with GEO for housing at the center that ran from March 28 through October 27, Project Salt Box reported, citing USAspending.gov figures showing $63.2 million obligated under that agreement. GEO's previous 10-year contract for the facility expired in 2025 and was worth at least $700 million, the same federal spending data shows — meaning the new deal, at roughly $140 million a year, is about double the annual value of the last one.
One detail in the record is still unresolved. Project Salt Box noted that the listed solicitation date is August 29, a day after ICE posted a solicitation for four turnkey detention centers, and that one site in that solicitation — a 1,500-bed facility near Seattle — listed the Tacoma center as its historical location. The Tacoma record carries no solicitation number, ICE has not said whether the contract came out of that solicitation, and it is unclear whether the Tacoma contract carries a clause in that solicitation saying state law would not apply to a contractor's work when it would regulate that work. Awaaz Punjab is reporting that link as an assessment by Project Salt Box, not as a confirmed fact.
GEO's own announcement describes a 1,635-bed facility. Project Salt Box, reading the federal procurement record, describes a 1,575-bed facility that held nearly 1,460 people in mid-August, according to members of Congress who visited. Both figures are reported here with their sources; the difference has not been explained by either side.
A facility under years of scrutiny
The Tacoma center, one of the largest immigration detention facilities on the U.S. West Coast, has drawn repeated scrutiny. Two detainees died there in 2024, Project Salt Box reported. Charles Leo Daniel, 61, was found dead on March 7, 2024, and Senator Patty Murray of Washington later asked the Government Accountability Office to audit ICE health care. Jose Manuel Sanchez-Castro, 36, died on October 27, 2024, days after being booked in; the Pierce County medical examiner ruled his death natural, caused by a perforated duodenal ulcer, in a finding reported in March 2026, while a 911 recording obtained by the University of Washington Center for Human Rights captured a nurse saying he had been going through fentanyl withdrawal. His widow and the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project have sued ICE for records, the reporting said.
ICE has said detainees receive a health screening within 12 hours of arrival and that emergency care is not denied. A 2020 University of Washington report found the facility held people in solitary confinement longer, on average, than any other ICE facility, and a Department of Homeland Security inspector general report in May 2023, based on an unannounced visit in 2022, found the facility met several detention standards while also finding that more than 30% of medical staff positions were vacant.
The scrutiny did not stop this year. In February, three men held at the facility sued GEO in Pierce County Superior Court, accusing guards of assault and sexual abuse in 2024 and alleging that the company falsified reports to ICE and conducted sham internal investigations, The Seattle Times reported via Project Salt Box. GEO Group and the federal government have said repeatedly that the facility meets rigorous standards. In June, Washington Attorney General Nick Brown said the state Department of Health had received more than 3,500 complaints about the facility, including neglected medical care, contaminated food and unsanitary conditions. In July, U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle ordered GEO to let state health inspectors in, excluding areas ICE controls for administrative and medical purposes, and KUOW reported in August that state officials were still being blocked from inspecting. Also in August, more than 140 detainees ended a nearly weeklong hunger strike over food and medical care; a GEO spokesperson told The Seattle Times that ICE is responsible for health care at the facility, and ICE declined to comment.
Source: Project Salt Box (SAM.gov records)
What it means for Washington — and for diaspora readers
For Washington's immigrant communities — including Punjabi and other South Asian families in the Seattle-Tacoma corridor, Kent, Auburn and the I-5 trucking corridor — the contract settles a practical question for the next decade: the region's main immigration detention center is not closing, shrinking or changing operators. Anyone detained by ICE in Washington will, in the ordinary course, be held at Tacoma under GEO, under a contract that now runs to 2036. The state-level fight over inspections, complaints and conditions, by contrast, is not settled by this contract and continues in court and in Olympia.
GEO, headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida, describes itself as a diversified government services provider. Its worldwide operations include the ownership and/or delivery of support services for 97 facilities totaling approximately 76,000 beds, with a workforce of up to approximately 20,000 employees, the company said.
What happens next
Work under the new contract began on October 28, the day it was signed, so there is no gap in operations at Tacoma. Because funds are committed through separate orders under this type of contract, the full $1.5 billion-scale value will appear in federal spending records gradually, order by order, rather than as a single payment. The open questions to watch are whether ICE confirms the contract's link to the August solicitation for four detention centers, whether the state health-inspection dispute reaches a lasting settlement, and whether the February lawsuit by three formerly detained men changes conditions or oversight at the center before the contract's first year is out.