The GEO Group Pays California $104,510 to Settle Workplace Safety Charges at ICE Detention Facility—Where Local Cops Won’t Investigate Crimes
by Chuck Sharman
The GEO Group, Inc., paid over $104,000 in May 2026 to settle charges by the California Department of Industrial Relations Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) that workplace safety rules were violated at Golden State Annex in McFarland, where the firm incarcerates detainees pursuant to a contract with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The following month, GEO Group’s commitment to detainee safety was again in question when a report by Capital & Main revealed that McFarland police were refusing to respond to crime reports from the lockup, citing an agreement to let GEO Group investigate itself.
The settlement resolved charges filed in December 2022, accusing GEO Group of failing to maintain workplace safety to Cal/OSHA standards during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was the first time that California had treated the firm and its detainee workers as employer and employees; previously, the state accepted GEO Group’s assertion that the work program was voluntary. That’s also the company’s justification for paying detainees just $1 per day for their labor, but GEO Group has so far been successfully sued for violating minimum wage laws in Washington and Colorado—prompting officials to get ICE to amend its detention standards to state that the work is voluntary, as reported elsewhere in this issue. [See: PLN, Sep. 2026, p.28.]
After Cal/OSHA cited the firm for the violations, GEO Group submitted an Aerosol Transmissible Disease (ATD) Exposure Control Plan, which Cal/OSHA accepted. Meanwhile, the firm also appealed the citations, and the nonprofit California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice (CCIJ) moved for third-party status on behalf of Golden State Annex detainees. An administrative law judge denied the motion, as well as a second and a third, but the denial was reversed by an appeals board. GEO Group then filed a mandamus action in state superior court for Sacramento County, seeking to overturn the appeals board’s decision.
At that point, the parties proceeded to reach their settlement agreement. Under its terms, GEO Group agreed to pay the state $104,510, including $4,510 in fines for the citations plus an additional $100,000 civil penalty. The CCIJ-represented detainees also agreed to drop the case. Importantly, GEO Group agreed to extend its ATD plan to a half-dozen other lockups it operates for ICE in the state: the Adelanto ICE Processing Center and Desert View Annex in Adelanto; the Central Valley Annex, also in McFarland; El Centro Detention Facility in El Centro; Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center in Bakersfield and Western Region Detention Facility in San Diego. The ATD plan was further extended to re-entry centers for detainees that GEO Group runs for ICE in El Monte, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco. It also covers detention that the firm now operates or may in the future operate for the U.S. Marshals Service and the federal Bureau of Prisons. See: In the Matter of the Appeal of: The Geo Group, Inc. dba Golden State Annex, Calif. OSHAInspection 1609228 (2026).
The Capital & Main report found that detainee attempts to refer GEO Group staffers for criminal investigation were repeatedly frustrated after the firm signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the city of McFarland in 2024. The MOU delegates authority or criminal investigations and enforcement actions to GEO Group staffers, though none of them is a sworn law enforcement officer. Troublingly, it puts GEO Group in charge of investigating allegations of abuse and sexual assault filed against firm employees.
McFarland officials confirmed to Capital & Main that the city police department will not respond to calls from detainees at Golden State Annex or Central Valley Annex, the two lockups in town run by GEO Group. Kyle Virgien, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project, called the news “worrying because of GEO Group’s human rights track record.”
“It’s certainly concerning that this private for-profit company with a history of problems at its facilities is being given any law enforcement authority,” he said.
Additional sources: CalMatters, Capital & Main
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