WASHINGTON—The Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) has filed a brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in a case that puts federal immigration detention in the state of Washington in jeopardy. Following a landmark ruling by the full Ninth Circuit, sitting en banc, striking down a California law banning private immigration detention centers operating under contract with the federal government, Washington State knew it could not ban such centers outright. Instead, Washington’s law makes them—and no other detention facilities in the state—subject to potentially-crippling state-imposed standards, inspections, and private lawsuits.
In its brief, IRLI shows that this state law is preempted under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause because it intentionally interferes with the federal program of using contractors to house immigration detainees. Indeed, by authorizing private lawsuits by detainees, the law easily could put the contractor running immigration detention in Washington out of business. And other sanctuary states could pass similar laws, crippling the federal government’s detention program across the country.
IRLI also shows that the law’s standards will actually make the facilities less safe and less humane, not more. For example, by sharply limiting solitary confinement, the law would force the contractor to let dangerous detainees, such as those who have committed sexual assault, mingle with the general detainee population. To avoid that very sort of problem, Washington does not impose these limits on solitary confinement in their own state prisons.
“With this law, Washington has tried a new way to cripple our nation’s immigration law enforcement, which relies so heavily on federal contractors to house detainees,” said Dale L. Wilcox, executive director and general counsel of IRLI. “We hope the court sees that, if banning private detention violates the Constitution, intentionally burdening it does, too, and strikes down this latest attempt by a sanctuary state to interfere with the nation’s immigration detention system.”
The case is The GEO Group, Inc., v. Inslee, No. 24-2815 (Ninth Circuit).
