Welcome to The Newsfeed.

We're here outside the Northwest ICE Processing Center, where for years now, human rights and community advocacy groups have documented unsanitary conditions and violence inside.

While active legal fights continue in the courts to get inside the facility, state and local authorities have had limits on their ability to provide oversight.

Multimedia Journalist Jaelynn Grisso reports a new federal contract for the facility puts even more limits on that oversight.

-Angelina Godoy, director of the University of Washington Center for Human Rights, analyzed a new contract that began in March between the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, and the private company called GEO Group that operates the Tacoma facility.

-The new contract specifically says that if there are areas where local or state law demands more rigorous standards than what the contract stipulates, that the lowest standard is what goes, which is the complete opposite of what the previous contracts had said.

-The state passed legislation in 2023 aimed at regulating the detention center and allowing access to inspections.

GEO Group and the state went to court, with a federal court recently deciding in the state's favor.

But the language of the new contract effectively means GEO group would not be held to any stricter laws that Washington passes.

However, Godoy said she believes it would be challenged in court.

GEO Group and ICE did not return requests for comment for this story.

The new contract is a temporary bridge contract until late October, but it's unclear what it's a bridge to and how that might affect the oversight of the facility in the long term.

-Next time, we'll look at other changes in the new contract that could cost taxpayers even more.

I'm Paris Jackson.

Thanks for watching The Newsfeed.