What happens when there’s an assault in Tacoma’s ICE detention center?

Each week on The Newsfeed, host Paris Jackson and a team of veteran journalists dive deep into one topic and provide impactful reporting, interviews and community insights from sources you can trust. Each day this week, this post will be updated with a new story from the team.

Oversight of health and safety issues is limited at ICE detention center in Tacoma 

Dirty drinking water. Poor hygiene. Lack of medical access. Physical assaults. These are only a few of the reported issues at the privately run immigration detention center in Tacoma.  

Access to information has historically been limited because the center is run by a private company with a federal contract, making state or local oversight a legal question that’s still being hashed out in the courts. 

But human rights and community advocacy groups have worked to document what they can.   

The reported issues at the Northwest ICE Processing Center run the gamut from unsanitary – think uncooked food and unwashed clothes – to unsafe or life threatening. 

State officials have tried to inspect the facility to verify these claims multiple times, often being turned away. In fact, the Washington Attorney General filed a lawsuit against GEO Group, the private company running the facility, for exactly that reason. 

The lawsuit filings say the state has received 3,500 complaints about the facility. 

Community advocacy groups have also documented delays for medical attention and alleged overuse of solitary confinement. 

In 2024 alone, two detainees died while in custody. 

Jose Manuel Sanchez-Castro passed in late October 2024. His cause of death was determined to be an ulcer, but a 9-1-1 call obtained by the University of Washington Center for Human Rights revealed he was going through fentanyl withdrawal.  

Earlier in 2024, Charles Leo Daniel died while in solitary confinement. With only two days in the general population, the 61-year-old man was held in solitary confinement for nearly four years. 

GEO Group and ICE did not return requests for comment on these cases. 

All this week, we’ll dig into assaults at the facility and what is or isn’t being done about it.