Activists plan protest for Sunday outside COVID-ravaged ICE immigration detention center

The group that has pushed to close the Northwest Detention Center near the Tacoma Tideflats will host a protest there Sunday to draw attention to a COVID-19 outbreak that has infected more than 150 detainees and employees since June.

La Resistencia planned the “emergency rally” after 28 more cases were reported this week at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility at 1623 East J St. The GEO Group, which manages private prisons and mental health facilities, opened the Tacoma location in 2004 with capacity for 1,575 people.

Detainees told La Resistencia “they are afraid and fearful of not only being infected with the virus, but also of the terrible medical attention already well known and documented,” according to a press release.

As of August 12, ICE reports that the NWDC has 37 active cases, defined as someone “currently under isolation or monitoring.” Since testing began in February 2020, the facility has had 207 confirmed cases and no deaths, according to the agency.

The outbreak began in June when the federal government transferred more than 1,000 immigrants from holding centers near the southern border, The Seattle Times reported this week.

“We want all Tacoma residents to be safe from COVID, and NWDC has become a hot spot for COVID infections in the area,” La Resistencia spokesperson Maru Mora Villalpando told The News Tribune in an email. “If ICE and federal authorities are not only not stopping the outbreak, but as a matter of fact, they are spreading it themselves, we need the local authorities to do something,” she said, referring to the City of Tacoma and the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department.

Neither the health department nor councilwoman Catherine Ushka, who is scheduled to speak at the Sunday event, immediately responded to requests for comment.

The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a class action lawsuit against the center in May 2020.

“ICE continues to detain medically vulnerable people in places like the Tacoma detention center when we know these types of actions have already led to fatal consequences,” wrote the immigrant rights group on Twitter at the time.

Attorney Aaron Korthuis told The Seattle Times that the government has released about 570 high-risk detainees, but “the harm is done.”

The protest on Sunday at noon will include signs, banners and car honking, according to a La Resistencia release, with comments from former detainees and Ushka.

More than two dozen other ICE detention facilities currently have more than 20 active cases, including a San Antonio residential center with 115.

This story was originally published August 14, 2021 at 1:42 PM.