Two units within NWDC have announced the start of a hunger strike to protest inhumane prison conditions, with at least 85 participants refusing meals. GEO Group, private detention profiteers, lockdown units.
Tacoma, WA – At least 85 immigrants detained inside Northwest Detention Center are currently refusing to eat until Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and GEO Group address continuous inhumane conditions inside the detention center, which according to those inside, amount to torture. Their list of demands follows those of past hunger strikes inside NWDC, which have happened continuously and periodically since at least 2014. They are:
- Real food. People get sick from eating what they give us; they deny us fruit and provide fake soy meat.
- Regular meal times. They change constantly!
- Low commissary prices. Current ones are prohibitive. Administration used to provide a commissary bag, but no more. ICE took away our only decent source of food.
- Real cleaning.
- Real COVID-19 preventative measures.
- Jobs that pay at least minimum wage! They took away our jobs, but won’t properly maintain the prison, or even pay us to do them. COs withhold recreation unless we clean.
- Haircuts more than once a month.
- Decent clothes, current ones are full of holes and dirty, not even dry.
- Decent bedding. We are handed child-sized blankets, and our sheets are not changed. We demand a change at least once a month.
- Better medical services, including dentist visits with real care. Current dentists won’t do anything but pull teeth.
- Real attention from ICE. Officials barely stop by, and they don’t know anything about our cases.
- No retaliation against us.
The hunger strike has spread across units F3 and F4, the latter of which is on lockdown. Detainees inside F3 allege that their decision was rushed by the sight of officers going inside F4 to remove the detainees’ belongings. Hunger strikers allege that these same officers tried to block F4’s windows to prevent them from seeing the raid. It is unclear what happened on the morning of February 1st into F4. Confirming unit F3’s comments, communication with F4 seems to be shut down. NWDC authorities are also blocking communication with unit G3; again, for no apparent reason.
Detainees at F3 are fearful of GEO and ICE repression, as has happened with every previous hunger strike in the past, but they remain committed to their political action. One detainee told La Resistencia, “They’re not giving us the right food, they’re not giving us the right meals, everything is late. A lot of people are getting sick. The portions are getting smaller and smaller.” The hunger striker added that they pursued remedy via the detention center’s institutional grievance process, to no avail. “We’ve been asking for changes in this place because they’ve been treating us like we are convicts, or we are prisoners,” said he, in allusion to the status of immigrant detention as civil, not criminal, detention. “We don’t get fruits, we don’t get veggies.”
Another hunger striker said, “Cleaning here is really awful, and so is the food. They have us living in terrible conditions while refusing us care.” As an example, he mentioned the detention center’s refusal to provide him treatment for a fungal infection, which he had due to NWDC’s substandard health conditions. “They got us living worse than animals,” he added.
The detainees’ list of demands alludes to the fact that NWDC’s administration recently lost a lawsuit for paying detainees less than one dollar a day to perform labor inside the prison. Rather than pay the $17 million they owe, and provide proper jobs to those inside, NWDC is appealing the lawsuit and refusing paid work. Nonetheless, they keep pressuring detainees into maintenance tasks by withholding recreation time from them. The hunger strike’s demands are also in line with the findings of the University of Washington Center for Human Rights, which find inhumane conditions in the areas of food, clothing, medical services, and solitary confinement.
Around the time this press release was sent, La Resistencia received calls from NWDC’s unit F4, reporting that GEO Group had sent about 30 guards outfitted in SWAT outfits to raid the unit. F3 witnesses report seeing the windows of F4 unit yellow from excessive use of pepper spray; SWAT teams were seemingly not letting detainees leave the unit to remain safe, but instead were forcing them out one by one. These SWAT officers also tried to cover F3 unit’s window to prevent them from seeing what was happening at F4. As of this writing, F3 detainees fear being raided too.
La Resistencia demands:
- The immediate withdrawal of SWAT officers from all units
- An end to the lockdown, and the re-establishment of communication between NWDC detainees and the outside.
- That GEO Group and ICE meet the hunger strikers’ demands.
The organization is also asking that concerned people contact ICE Seattle Field Director Drew Bostock to express these political demands, either by emailing him at drew.h.bostock@ice.dgs.gov. Or call him at 253-779-6000 or 206-835-0650.
La Resistencia will rally outside Northwest Detention Center TONIGHT at 7 PM, in solidarity with the hunger strikers and all detainees.
La Resistencia is a grassroots organization in Washington state led by undocumented people in solidarity with detainees at Northwest Detention Center, fighting for the closing of the facility and an end to all detentions and deportations.
El Tribuno del Pueblo brings you articles written by individuals or organizations, along with our own reporting. Bylined articles reflect the views of the authors. Unsigned articles reflect the views of the editorial board. Please credit the source when sharing: tribunodelpueblo.org. We’re all volunteers, no paid staff. Please donate at http://tribunodelpueblo.org to keep bringing you the voices of the movement because no human being is illegal.
