For some reason, officials at the Northwest ICE Processing Center don’t want Washington health department inspectors to see inside the facility.
The Washington Department of Health has received more than 3,000 complaints from detainees, former detainees and their families. They range from issues of food and water quality and lack of proper hygiene to allegations of abuse and medical neglect. A lawsuit recently was filed claiming sexual abuse.
According to reports, some of those detained there — human beings — are living in squalor and peril, in conditions that put their health at risk.
Health department inspectors have tried to enter the Tacoma facility 10 times since 2023, yet each time the private company that operates the facility, the GEO Group, refused entry.
This, even after the state Legislature passed a law in 2023 that set basic health and safety standards for private detention centers and directed the state’s health department to inspect them.
After much back and forth in court, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year vacated a lower court’s preliminary injunction against implementing the law. Still, the facility denies entry to inspectors.
Last month, Washington’s attorney general and governor once again appealed to the courts for justice. They filed a motion with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington for a temporary injunction to bar the company from blocking state inspectors.
The state’s health department is charged with safeguarding the health and welfare of all Washington residents, regardless of their legal status.
There have been too many deaths — four at the 1,600-bed Tacoma site and at least 46 nationwide — since the Trump administration made immigration enforcement a top priority.
The University of Washington’s Center for Human Rights has launched a report series that examines human rights conditions at the detention center. Its latest report, released Tuesday, revealed that over a three-year period, Immigration Customs and Enforcement have received complaints and “credible information about conditions at the facility that threatened the health and well-being of those detained, and despite the complaints of its own employees, ICE repeatedly failed to … force GEO to comply with basic cleanliness standards.” The report also cites concerns about safety standards outlined in ICE and GEO Group’s latest contract.
As more privately run detention centers are planned under Trump’s immigration agenda, such allegations, complaints and findings cannot be dismissed. The first step toward correcting any problem is to allow those trained in public health inside to see what’s going on.
