The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Northwest Detention Center is where federal law and illegal immigrants meet, but few outside the struggle over immigration ever see it.

It serves Alaska, Washington and Oregon, and it’s the reason immigration policy protesters are in Tacoma this weekend.

Illegal immigration is a national hot button. That’s unfortunate, because the issues are complex and deserve thoughtful discussion, not flamethrower rhetoric from all sides.

But this weekend is one for rhetoric, with the detention center as its central image.

Fliers for the protests feature a girl leaning against the bars of a dirty cell with brick walls. She looks about 12. A note at the bottom of the photo reads: “Photo taken at ICE Detention Center in Austin, TX, USA.”

If that is, indeed, a photo of an ICE detention center in Austin, the people of that city might do well to look into conditions there. If illegal immigrants here were being detained in similar conditions, we would be obliged to do the same.

They are not.

But most people in Pierce County have never been inside the center on Tacoma’s Tideflats that opened in 2004 and on Thursday held 972 people from 85 countries. That’s why, when The News Tribune’s mobile journalist, Scott Fontaine, arranged a tour, I signed on.

The center’s basic purpose is to house detainees until their cases can be heard and they can be either released or deported, said Neil Clark, Seattle’s ICE director, who led the tour. The average stay is 33 days.

Most of the people held there are from Central and South America. On Thursday, the center housed 509 from Mexico, 61 from Guatemala, 45 from El Salvador and 29 from Honduras.

The baseline crime for most is being in this country illegally. On Thursday, that’s why 95 women and 593 men were there. They’re low risk, Level 1, and wore blue coveralls. Level 2 detainees have been convicted of non-violent crimes, such as theft. The 15 women and 179 men at that level wore orange coveralls. Ninety men wore the red overalls that indicate a conviction for a violent crime.

Staff, too, are color-coded. Federal ICE officers wear blue uniforms. Guards who work for The Geo Group, the business that operates the building, wear beige. So do the United States Public Health Service doctors, nurses and technicians who operate a medical clinic 24 hours a day.

After the colors, I noticed the smell. I had expected mustiness, or worse.

There was none anywhere in the complex. Floors, from the intake center through the corridors, law library, living pods, visiting rooms and courtrooms, were clean, buffed concrete. Walls were white, and unscuffed. Detainees get fresh clothing three times a week, fresh bedding twice a week.

Bedding and beds are basic in the extreme: Two sheets and a cheap blanket, a thin mattress and a metal bunk with cubbyholes for personal items, including plastic sandals.

The living quarters are two-tier pods. Most people sleep in bunk beds.

Those who stay longer eventually move into the two-person rooms along the perimeter. Bathrooms and showers have no doors. During daylight hours, detainees can shoot hoops or play handball in an adjacent exercise area. Inside, there are three televisions, which detainees listen to with headphones, and there are books, magazines and board games.

The lights are on day and night.

There have been complaints that food portions are small and arrive cold. The center serves three hot meals, for a total of 2,900 calories a day, Clark said as carts of hamburger-and-Jell-O lunches wheeled toward the pods. Last summer, about 300 people got food-poisoning symptoms. Though the food was tested, the cause was never found, Clark said.

This was just a glimpse, but it looked better than any jail I’ve seen.

As Clark said: “This is detention, and nobody wants to be detained.”

Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677

kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com