TACOMA, Wash. — Editor's note: This story contains descriptions of self-harm. If you or someone you know is in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. Visit Vibrant Emotional Health’s Safe Space for digital resources.
What's happening behind the walls of Tacoma's Northwest ICE Processing Center? It's a question that immigration rights advocates, critics, and lawmakers have spent months trying to answer.
On Wednesday, the immigration rights group La Resistencia announced that a series of 911 calls may give a peak behind the curtain. During a press conference, the group played multiple 911 calls of workers asking for emergency assistance after detainees attempted suicide, or had other medical emergencies.
La Resistencia said the calls come from the same time period as the death of Charles Daniel, a Trinidadian national who was found dead in solitary confinement last month.
ICE records show Daniel served almost three and a half years in solitary confinement, the second-longest stretch in solitary confinement of any person in ICE custody since 2018, despite being identified as having significant mental illness.
La Resistencia said the calls and Daniel's death show how poorly detainees are being treated.
"We are telling everyone in the world, we're number one, this is the best country in the world,” said Maru Mora-Villalpando, an organizer for La Resistencia. “They arrive and this is what they face?"
Adam Boyd represents some of the detainees inside the facility and said it’s common for detainees to spend years inside the processing center. He said during that time, his clients are forced to endure difficult conditions with limited access to medical and psychological care.
“It’s just a really difficult place to live for several years,” Boyd said. “Even the average person who’s an asylum seeker, they’re fleeing for their lives, in most cases, and they’re dealing with serious trauma, often having been abused by authorities in their home country, and then they’re thrown into a prison here in the U.S. That’s traumatizing in the very best of circumstances.”
Boyd also said the very nature of detention inside the facility is problematic.
“Many people don’t know when they’re going to be released, or if they’re going to be released,” he said. “In many prison systems you have a sentence that you’re serving so you know, Oh, I have one year, I can count down to when I’m actually going to be released. We often can’t tell when our clients are going to be released because it depends on how their civil immigration proceedings are going, and there’s no end date for that.”
Rahmunullah Shinwari, who hails from Afghanistan, was released on Wednesday after spending a month in the facility. He said he left his home country to escape the Taliban and hopes to reach Canada, gain citizenship, and retrieve his family. Yet despite his relatively short stay, Shinwari said he also witnessed suicide attempts during his time inside.
"I saw one boy, he tried to [attempt suicide],” he said. “He fell down from the second floor, and then he [broke his leg]. After this, he went to the hospital."
When asked about the suicide attempts, the GEO Group, the company that runs the facility, deferred comments to ICE. The federal agency said in a statement that it's "committed to providing safe, secure, humane environments for those in our custody, and takes very seriously all allegations of abuse or misconduct."
ICE’s statement went on to say that “detainees with a mental illness placed in a Special Management Unit are under the direct care of mental health personnel who evaluate the appropriateness of the placement and ensure appropriate health care is provided.”
Letters from state and federal lawmakers, including Senators Patty Murray, Pramila Jayapal, and Maria Cantwell, called for inspectors to be let into the facility, but Villalpando said it's time for something more substantial.
"They are missing in action, we have not seen them,” she said. “They have given us a couple of meetings and that's been it. We want them to come, we want them to do something, but we also want them to end the contract already. We don't want more people dying."
If you or someone you know is in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. Visit Vibrant Emotional Health’s Safe Space for digital resources.