Chemical Warfare
EPA FOIA Release Reveals GEO Group Allegedly Chemically Poisoned Detained Immigrants as Trump's EPA Drops Its Case Against GEO
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EPA Drops Suit Alleging GEO Chemically Poisoning Detained Migrants
As federal, state, and local forces pepper-sprayed and tear-gassed those protesting ICE raids and detention centers this week, ProPublica reported that the EPA has abandoned its enforcement action against The GEO Group. The EPA’s June 2024 complaint alleged GEO violated the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) more than 1,100 times at the GEO’s Adelanto Detention Facility between February 2022 and March 2023 by applying a disinfectant called “HALT” inside housing units, on microwaves, and in sleeping areas without providing detained workers splash goggles or gloves, and without properly circulating air in these units. If successful, EPA’s could have subjected GEO to over $4 million in civil penalties arising out of the company’s Adelanto violations alone.
The adverse health impacts of GEO’s allegedly off-label applications could include burning in the throat, red, irritated eyes, and inflammation of the lungs and airways. Long-term health impacts have not been studied on these and other disinfectants because nobody would dare subject people to prolonged, unlawful exposures and then write a study about it or provide data to someone to those who’d do so. The closest I’ve found to such a report is a global analysis of health effects from sanitizers and disinfectant sprays following COVID, and a facility-specific analysis of adverse health impacts at a hospital. Both observed adverse health impacts predicted by some of the product manufacturer’s own labels: “permanent damage” to eyes, “chemical burn” to eyes, mouth, throat, and stomach. Gnarly stuff.
I wrote about GEO’s use of another toxic chemical at Adelanto—HDQ Neutral—and Social Justice Legal Foundation’s lawsuit against the company arising from it. The fight in Adelanto arose within a larger context, driven by people inside and organizers who support them. As usual, La Resistencia leads the way from Washington state. Since at least 2020, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been investigating GEO’s use of potentially toxic chemicals inside its ICE detention facilities. Tina Vazquez wrote a wonderfully comprehensive and compelling piece for The Counter showing how the poisoning was unfolding at GEO’s Northwest Detention Center back in 2021.
The bottom line surrounding all of these cases and journalistic treatments is that GEO is allegedly using detained immigrant workers to clean and disinfect its detention centers for $1 a day (or less), and refusing to routinely provide them the protective equipment and ventilation necessary to avoid serious harm.
EPA Drops Another Round of GEO Region 10 (Tacoma) FOIA Records
Within this context, EPA’s June 11 interim response to a FOIA request I filed back in December 2022 seems like propitious timing. Among the records EPA Region 10 provided are a final and unredacted report of the agency’s 2020 inspection at GEO’s Tacoma facility. These records reveal an apparent culture of noncompliance and impunity. I have included with this post the audio Google Notebook LM created after reading the records I uploaded to its system. Usual caveats about AI and such, but it’s pretty revealing what the robots found. (please let me know if you find this content helpful and would like more of it).
“Multiple detainees at NWIPC have complained of sore throats and headaches in connection with the applications of these pesticide products, indicating detainees may be inhaling the products being applied due to their proximity within the living areas.”
The upshot of the newly released EPA records and the EPA’s now-dropped Region IX complaint, at least at first blush, is that even after being warned by EPA about potentially hazardous use of pesticidal disinfectants that could cause harm to migrants detained in multiple facilities and involving multiple different products, the company simply switched from Sani-T-10 and HDQ-Neutral to “Halt”.
All of the products, I believe, are manufactured by the same company, Ohio-based Spartan Chemical.
Weaponized
According to the EPA’s inspection records and allegations in Social Justice Legal Foundation’s suit against GEO on behalf of people at Adelanto, the company’s staff didn’t just expose detained immigrants to preventable harm and adverse health impacts by failing to use the toxic chemicals in accordance with their warning labels.
Detained immigrants at Tacoma and Adelanto reported GEO Guards allegedly sprayed them with the toxic disinfectants as punishment.
You read that right. Allegations of chemical warfare against people inside these spaces.
The Company Profiting from Alleged Chemical Poisoning of Detained Immigrants
Where the federal government is abandoning the health and safety of people locked in ICE’s for-profit cages, detained immigrants are fighting back—and winning.
In January, a federal judge allowed Social Justice Legal Foundation to add Spartan Chemical as a defendant in its lawsuit on behalf of detained immigrants at Adelanto. The allegations supporting FAC, which Spartan claimed would be time-barred, are pretty shocking if one reads the Court’s order:
“HDQ Neutral is a highly toxic chemical that is particularly dangerous because its two active components, DDAC and ADBAC1, have been linked to numerous, serious, acute and chronic health effects.”
“GEO lied about and obscured its use of HDQ Neutral and its adverse health effects to Plaintiffs . . .”
The Detention Economy is Larger than ICE Contractors
These records of alleged mass chemical poisoning and incidental chemical warfare against detained immigrants demand a wider aperture into who profits from the harms ICE detention centers visit upon populations. Detention is a big enterprise, and while labor and land are the two largest costs associated with profiting from it, the companies also require vendors and bankers to function. Corporate accountability for companies profiting from poisoning—especially when the federal government’s experts are being prevented from pursuing the statutory remedies Congress passed—is more important now than ever.
An excellent primer on this structure for those new to the subject is Worth Rises founder Bianca Tylek’s book, The Prison Industry. Prison Legal News’s February 2024 article How ‘Big Capital’ Learned to Love Mass Incarceration is another vital contribution to this study. I mapped part of that article here:
This system is a choice. It is not inevitable. Happy weekend!