The federal government could own Tacoma's largest immigrant detention center by fall, raising contested questions about whether Washington state health inspections would survive the transfer.
At the same time, 140 detainees inside the facility have been on a hunger strike since Aug. 11, protesting inadequate food and medical care.
GEO Group chairman and CEO George Zoley told investors on a call in early August that the company and ICE share a "mutual interest" in completing facility sales by late September.
Neither ICE nor GEO Group has confirmed the Tacoma facility is included in the negotiations. But the 1,575-bed Northwest ICE Processing Center matches ICE's July Request for Information, which sought a turn-key facility within 30 miles of its Seattle field office in Tukwila with at least 1,500 beds. GEO Group's 10-year contract to manage the center expired in 2025; the current operating agreement runs through Oct. 27.
ICE purchased a comparable California facility from CoreCivic for nearly $500 million earlier in August.
Hunger strike enters second week
About 140 detainees in housing units G3 and G4 began refusing meals on Tuesday, Aug. 11, according to Democracy Now, citing the advocacy group La Resistencia. Among their demands: treatment for detainees with broken or dislocated bones who reportedly have not received medical care.
La Resistencia's director of organizing, Josefina Mora-Cheung, said this is the 20th hunger strike at the facility in 2026 alone, compared to an average of about 12 per year.
U.S. Rep. Emily Randall, D-Washington, whose district includes the Tacoma facility, and U.S. Rep. Maxine Dexter, D-Oregon, made an unannounced visit on Saturday, Aug. 15. They said 1,458 people are detained at the center. The lawmakers were allowed to tour the kitchen and housing units but were denied access to the medical wing.
GEO denied the strike was happening. Employees showed the lawmakers paperwork for units F3 and F4 with no refused meals. A detainee contradicted that account, telling the representatives the strike was in units G3 and G4, OregonLive reported.
"It is incredibly frustrating to me that as a government official, as a member of Congress, I cannot get straight, accurate information from a group that is being paid by taxpayers, a for-profit institution," Dexter said.
The kitchen was short four staff positions at the time of the visit, facility officials told the lawmakers.
What a federal purchase means for oversight
Draft ICE contract language published in July declares that "applicable or more stringent state or local laws or regulations shall not apply" to facility operations, according to Wired. Washington state health inspectors have been blocked from entering the center since a Ninth Circuit judge paused a lower-court order on July 21 that would have required GEO to admit them.
The Washington Department of Health disputes that a sale would end state authority. Kara Kostanich, a department official, told KNKX the facility does not sit on a federal enclave, so state laws still apply regardless of ownership. She said GEO would remain the operator under any sale and stay subject to state law.
Nayna Gupta, policy director at the American Immigration Council, said a federal purchase would let the government "sidestep efforts that states have been leading to push back" on detention conditions.
Rep. Randall said the potential sale is part of a plan by President Trump and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller to enrich GEO Group's leadership, noting that Zoley and the company donated heavily to Trump's reelection campaign.
What happens next
Zoley described the Trump administration's goal as consolidating detention into "fewer, larger facilities with a normal detention capacity of about 100,000." The Tacoma center, one of the largest on the West Coast, fits that blueprint.
A June ICE inspection found a detainee whose required health assessment came 22 days late and suicide-watch checks that ran up to nearly 14 hours apart instead of the required eight. In February, GEO staff at the facility were sued in Pierce County for assault and sexual abuse.
Rep. Dexter said she plans to send a letter to federal officials seeking answers about conditions and the hunger strike. About 100 people rallied outside the facility on Saturday, Aug. 15, in solidarity with the strikers.
