US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has published draft contract terms for private detention facilities that explicitly state state and local laws "shall not apply" to their operations, according to federal documents seen by WIRED. The move came just a day after a federal judge ruled that contracts cannot override state law and ordered ICE's largest Pacific Northwest detention centre, in Tacoma, opened to Washington state health inspectors, suggesting ICE is seeking to entrench the disputed legal position across multiple states before it can be fully tested in court.

The draft terms, posted on 10 July, cover 5,500 detention beds across four regions, with bed counts and locations matching facilities already run by the GEO Group in Tacoma, Aurora (Colorado), Pompano Beach (Florida) and Philipsburg (Pennsylvania) — all of whose contracts expire in the coming months. US District Judge Benjamin Settle's ruling followed three years of litigation, ten refused inspections and 3,500 detainee complaints, and rejected near-identical "state law shall not apply" language in GEO's March contract for the Tacoma site; a Ninth Circuit judge has since paused his order pending an appeal decision expected in early August. Companies had under a week to respond to the new terms before the 17 July deadline, and neither the Department of Homeland Security nor GEO Group responded to requests for comment.