Caravans protest immigrant detention
Tacoma, Wash.
Im/migrant-led caravans from the Pacific Northwest region came to protest the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) in Tacoma, Wash., May 8. The Mothers Day action, held the day before, brought families from Portland and Salem, Ore., Seattle and other cities. Their cars were decked with “Free Them All” flags for their family members and others behind bars.
Credit: Cheryl McArthur
This caravan was part of nationally coordinated actions by the American Friends Service Committee. Along with several immigrant rights organizations, women’s, labor and various progressive organizations supported the Tacoma action.
The NWDC is the largest immigration prison on the West Coast and is run by the for-profit GEO Group. Prisoners are held under torturous conditions, and legal assistance is rare. This year the Washington State Legislature banned private prisons, but not until NWDC’s contract expires in 2025! But solidarity groups want it
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“This is a moment, I do believe, where if you look at history things are static, static, static, and then boom, the conditions exist when big changes can take place.”
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, June 8, 2020
Washington’s state legislature completed its 105-day regular session on April 25 after passing a large number of measures that will benefit working class Washingtonians. These items include police, labor and housing reform bills, as well a new capital gains tax and increased funding for human needs.
After a historic year of protest and unprecedented levels of civic engagement, the Legislature passed a number of bills related to policing. These bills include a ban on chokeholds, neck restraints and no-knock warrants, limits on use of military equipment and tear gas, a requirement for officers to intervene if they see colleagues using excessive force or engaging in misconduct and an overhaul of the process for decertifying police officers fired fo
About 50 children being housed at an intake center in Long Beach have tested positive for COVID-19, along with 14 more at the Pomona Fairplex.
What’s more, in a Kafka-esque twist, an agency caseworker asked the judge to make Rivera undergo a mental health assessment because of possible trauma involving the government separating him from the child and imprisoning him. Angelina Godoy, director of the Center for Human Rights at the University of Washington, found that recommendation exasperating.
“If they’re concerned about his trauma, why don’t they stop inflicting it upon him by returning his child?” asked Godoy, a UW professor of international studies.
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April 18, 2021 09:31:50 am
Washington Governor Jay Inslee signed a bill on Wednesday that bans for-profit detention centers, including immigration facilities, in the state of Washington.
The only Washington facility impacted by the bill is the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma. The Northwest Detention Center is one of the United States’ largest, for-profit immigration jails. The GEO Group operates this facility under a contract with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The bill would shut down the detention center by 2025 because GEO’s contract with ICE expires in 2025. The bill will likely face a legal challenge.
The Northwest Detention Center is a 1,575-bed immigration jail. Fewer than 200 detainees are currently at the jail because of pandemic-related precautions. Supporters of the bill assert that the sharp decrease in immigration detention resulting from the pandemic shows that it is not necessary to detain a high number of immigrants.