ICE might want to expand detention in WA. What would that mean for Tacoma?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- ICE appears poised to seek a 1,635‑bed contract for the Seattle area.
- Tacoma zoning since 2017 prohibits expanding the Northwest ICE Processing Center.
- Rumors of a new Tacoma facility sparked community fear and prompted city response.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement appears to want to beef up its detention capacity in Washington, raising questions about whether Tacoma’s immigration lockup can be expanded or if the federal government is eyeing property to keep up with President Donald Trump’s campaign of mass deportation.
City of Tacoma officials recently attended a neighborhood meeting to address those questions, telling residents that land-use regulations effectively prohibit the expansion of the detention center in Tacoma or adding new detention facilities in the city.
The Northwest ICE Processing Center on the Tacoma Tideflats has a capacity for 1,575 beds, and crowding last year led to a few dozen people being temporarily transferred to a facility in Alaska. The facility’s average daily population climbed throughout 2025, according to ICE statistics, and in January that figure was 1,381.
In December, postings on two government websites indicated that ICE was looking for a larger detention center. On a contracting website for the Department of Homeland Security, a contracting opportunity said ICE’s Seattle Field Office needed a facility with 1,635 beds, estimating that the contract was worth more than $100 million.
The webpage said the incumbent for the contract was the GEO Group, the contractor that has long operated Tacoma’s immigration detention center. That Florida-based company, which runs correctional facilities around the world, had a 10-year contract with ICE to manage the Tacoma facility that was set to expire in September.
The GEO Group referred questions to ICE, which did not respond to a request for comment.
A now-inactive “presolicitation notice,” on SAM.gov, another contracting website for the government, also described expanded detention capacity in the Seattle area. It said it was looking for industry feedback on draft documents that described a contract for a detention facility with 1,635 beds, with transportation routes from the Northwest ICE Processing Center to cities in Washington and Oregon.
Do the documents mean Tacoma’s detention center is slated for expansion? Or that the federal government will put a larger facility in the city? Last week, unsubstantiated rumors spread on social media that the latter was true, and that ICE was considering purchasing the now-closed Fred Meyer at 72nd Street and Pacific Avenue. But it was false.
Andrea Haug, chair of the South End Neighborhood Council, where the store is located, said in a phone call Tuesday that she heard the rumor Thursday. By Sunday, she said concern was growing — she saw posts circulating on Facebook about the rumor and was getting messages herself.
It was enough that Haug and other leaders of the South End Neighborhood Council decided they needed to shift the agenda of their Feb. 2 meeting to address it.
The morning before the meeting, the council reached out to multiple local and state elected officials to try to get some answers. Haug said she was shocked that all of them were responsive. Deputy Mayor Joe Bushnell and Tacoma City Council members Sandesh Sadalge and Olgy Diaz attended the neighborhood meeting (Diaz was there via Zoom).
“There is no plan for any detention center at the Fred Meyer location,” Sadalge said at the meeting, according to a recording shared with The News Tribune.
Sadalge said the rumor first appeared in December, and city officials contacted developers for the site to ensure it was false.
What was true, Sadalge said, was that the Department of Health and the Department of Homeland Security had sent a request for proposal considering a detention center somewhere in the state.
Sadalge said it was unlikely the detention center would be placed in Tacoma.
“Years ago, we actually updated land use to effectively not allow any detention centers anywhere else in Tacoma and also not allow the current one to expand,” Sadalge said.
Maria Lee, a spokesperson for the City of Tacoma, had a similar answer when The News Tribune asked about the facility’s ability to expand. She said in 2017, the City Council rezoned the land where the detention center is located to prohibit that type of facility.
“This made the current Northwest ICE Processing Center non-conforming, meaning it cannot be significantly expanded,” Lee said in an email. “This zoning and regulatory change was previously challenged by GEO Group, but Tacoma prevailed in that litigation. Current zoning and regulations further limit the non-conforming use rights of facilities like the Northwest ICE Processing Center by prohibiting any expansion of capacity / beds.”
Although ICE doesn’t seem poised to bring another detention center to Tacoma, the fear of ICE enforcement was palpable in the neighborhood meeting. According to Tacoma’s equity index, City Council District 5, which includes the South End, has the largest share of foreign-born residents in the city.
Bushnell, who represents the district, said the spread of unfounded rumors isn’t helpful for residents who are targets of immigration enforcement, and he encouraged attendees to report ICE activity to the Washington Immigration Solidarity Network, which works to verify these reports.
“It’s not helpful because we have a lot of families living in fear that are not going to work, they’re not leaving their home, and if they need to go to the grocery store, need to go to work, they need to know that there isn’t actually someone out there that could cause them harm,” Bushnell said.
