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The Northwest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington, is the only for-profit detention center in the state and one of the largest immigrant detention centers in the Western U.S. Also known as the Northwest Detention Center, its documented history of human rights violations includes withholding medical care and excessive use of solitary confinement. On March 7, Charles Leo Daniel, an immigrant from Trinidad and Tobago with a history of mental illness, committed suicide there after spending more than three years in solitary confinement. Since then, multiple detainees have attempted suicide, and more than 200 others went on a hunger strike in solidarity.
The Northwest Detention Center is not unique: There are nearly 40,000 people in more than 200 immigrant jails and detention centers in the United States, and many of them have a record of neglect and abuse.
For the past 10 years, La Resistencia Northwest, a grassroots activist group, has organized alongside detainees to protest conditions at the center, demanding medical care, clean clothes, and adequate and unspoiled food. Ultimately, the group hopes to shut down the center and end deportations. La Resistencia has set up a protest camp there to demand a prompt independent investigation into Daniel’s death.
High Country News interviewed two members of La Resistencia’s leadership team about what motivates them to keep advocating for those detained.
Maru Mora Villalpando
Maru Mora Villalpando, the founder of La Resistencia, was born and raised in Mexico City.
In high school, I was already participating in marches supporting worker’s strikes in the mid-1980s, mainly at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. I was part of union and student movements.
In my early 20s, I started traveling back and forth between Mexico and the U.S. to learn English, but also because I didn’t want to stay in Mexico. Mexico was very dangerous, especially being a woman and being outspoken.
In 1996, the Clinton administration passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. If you were here undocumented and left, they wouldn’t let you (back) into the country for potentially 10 years. So, in 1996, I ended up staying here along with millions of other people. I had friends in Seattle, so that’s why I ended up here.
I had my daughter in 1997 when I was 26, and realized I needed to connect with my community. That’s when I started organizing again, teaching English to immigrants and refugees.
The goal should not be citizenship; the goal should be to get rid of detention and ICE.
Being undocumented, I was told that I needed to wait for immigration reform to get my citizenship. So I started learning about public policy. I started organizing with people in other states and ended up testifying in front of Congress. I became a lobbyist. I advocated for changes in state laws to protect immigrants against police and ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement).
Eventually I started to believe that we were never going to get immigration reform. Even if some people become citizens, others are still detained. The goal should not be citizenship; the goal should be to get rid of detention and ICE. The goal should be freedom. That’s why I ended up switching to civil disobedience.
In 2013, I’d seen undocumented immigrants doing civil disobedience across the country, and I led a protest to block the entrance to the Northwest Detention Center. My initial plan was to get arrested. I thought, “I’ll get myself arrested, then I’ll organize from the inside.” But that failed, and honestly, they didn’t need someone on the inside. They were already very well-organized. They’d already gone on hunger strike. They needed someone on the outside.
After the protest, detained people started calling me. La Resistencia started with my phone. For years, I communicated with people inside, asking, “What’s going on, what do people need to know?” People from inside the center would call me, and I was the only one answering the phone. I started organizing with people who had been released, too. We formed La Resistencia in 2014.
I was undocumented for 25 years before I got my green card. It was a big part of my identity. When my daughter was little, I would always think, “What if it happens to me? Who’s going to take care of my child? Who’s going to support me if we’re alone here in the United States?” Every time people that are detained call me, I always wonder what if it was me? If we don’t fight, it could happen to me. It could happen to anyone.
Rufina Reyes
Rufina Reyes immigrated to the United States in 2000. She’s been part of La Resistencia for four years, and is part of the current leadership team, working with Liliana Chumpitasi and Wendy Pantoja.
In our hometown, my husband and I didn’t have work. Our children were small, and we didn’t have enough money to raise them. After immigration policy changed in the mid-’90s ,and it became harder for him to go back and forth to the U.S., we spent a lot of time apart. And so we decided to all come to the United States on tourist visas. My husband and I found work landscaping. That was how we could support our family.
My brother was detained here at the height of the pandemic, around three years ago. In Mexico, he was the administrator of a small tourist center in my hometown, which is a tiny village in Guerrero. Because of his position, a criminal organization demanded that he start working for them. They extorted him, and when he refused, they eventually kidnapped him. Thankfully, we were able to pool our money and negotiate for his release, but afterward, the group still expected him to work for them, and they started threatening our family. My whole family had to flee from our village after that. None of us can go back. And even though I was in the States at the time, I felt like I was exiled from my home.
At first, my brother went to another part of Mexico, but he still felt like he was being targeted. So I told him to spend a few days, maybe weeks, here. He came from Mexico and had a tourist visa immigration and they detained him. The last we had heard from him, he was at the airport in Mexico on his way here. Immigration detained him when he landed at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. We were going crazy trying to find him for weeks, until finally, we looked for him at the Northwest Detention Center. ICE never told us where he was and never let him communicate with us.
ICE never told us where he was and never let him communicate with us.
After we found him, my brother started telling me about what was happening inside the detention center. It was the pandemic. People in the center were getting COVID. There were no masks or social distancing. Nothing. People were afraid of dying. He came from a place where he was oppressed, and then felt like he came here to another cage.
I started out at La Resistencia mainly answering the phone and collecting stories from people inside. In all of the stories I heard, I saw myself reflected back. I saw my family and I saw my brother. When my brother was eventually released after three months, I kept going. I’ve never been able to stomach injustice, and I grew to really like the work I was doing. A year later, Maru recruited me to the leadership team, alongside other detainees and people with detained family members.
My brother is still here in Washington, seeking asylum. (But inside), there are people detained who can’t speak English, or even Spanish. What can they do inside? We have to shed light onto what they’re living. And that’s why I keep fighting.
Natalia Mesa is an editorial fellow for High Country News based in Seattle, Washington, and reporting on science, and environmental and social justice. Email her at natalia.mesa@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.
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