ICE center in Tacoma uses ‘chemical agents’ on people detained there

The multibillion-dollar company that runs the immigrant detention center in Tacoma confirmed deploying “chemical agents” Wednesday as conflict over allegedly inadequate food and unsanitary conditions escalate.

GEO Group guards at the Northwest ICE Processing Center took the measure after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorized “non-lethal use of force” in response to a confrontation during a housing unit inspection that discovered contraband razor blades, an ICE spokesperson said.

The unit’s detainees barricaded their door before the chemical agents were used, according to GEO and a witness, and multiple reports say a hunger strike is taking place at the facility, though that’s contested by GEO.

Maru Mora Villalpando, of the group La Resistencia, which closely follows conditions at the detention center, said Wednesday’s confrontation marked the first time she’s heard of chemical agents being used at the facility, though there have been reports of tear gas used at other immigrant detention centers.

She also said one detainee tried to kill himself after the incident — a claim GEO and ICE deny. A detainee at the facility died by suicide in 2018.

The confrontation taps into a battle between state officials who want to ban privately run detention operations and the corporate and government entities that seek to keep them running. It also highlights the opaque way the Tacoma facility runs, with confusing messages about who’s ultimately responsible for an institution operated by a private company under contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“These latest reports are alarming,” Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a statement. “Unfortunately, they are consistent with the concerns my office has long had regarding the unlawful and unsafe conditions at the Northwest ICE Processing Center.”

GEO fired back in a statement, strongly refuting “baseless allegations” the Florida-based company claimed “are part of a long-standing radical campaign to attack ICE contractors, abolish ICE, and end federal immigration detention by proxy” in Washington.

David Yost, the ICE spokesperson, wrote in an email that the agency “is committed to ensuring that all those in its custody reside in safe, secure and humane environments.” He also included a photo of a razor blade attached to a comb that was confiscated during Wednesday’s inspection.

In a previous phone call, Yost indicated ICE had limited control over what happens in the facility that bears its name. “I don’t have direct oversight over GEO,” he said, referring questions to that company.

Yet, Christopher Ferreira, a GEO corporate relations manager, said by phone the company would only comment by email because all statements must be approved by ICE. The government agency sends immigrants to the facility that it charges with being in the country unlawfully.

According to the statement Ferreira later sent, the Wednesday incident involved “a small group of high-security detainees” who were being disruptive, barricading themselves inside their housing unit and blocking security cameras.

“Staff were able to diffuse the initial disruption, with more than half of the detainees complying,” Ferreira said. “However, the remaining detainees continued to be unresponsive to staff orders and, as a matter of protocol, this resulted in the use of chemical agents.”

The statement added: “We take the use of chemical agents with the utmost seriousness and our staff follow strict federal standards as it relates to their use.”

Christian Dueñas, who’s being held in a unit directly across from the one where the confrontation occurred, said he could see and hear much of what happened. The confrontation began, he said, when guards inspected the unit, which Dueñas estimates holds roughly 30 people. The guards confiscated empty soda bottles detainees were using as water bottles, a use guards said was prohibited, said Dueñas, who didn’t mention razor blades.

When detainees got upset, the guards told them to go to their beds. The detainees refused, according to Dueñas, saying: “You can’t treat us like it’s a prison.” Detainees are subject to civil, not criminal, deportation proceedings.

The situation escalated from there. Guards began removing items from the unit: an Xbox video game console, tablets, even chairs, Dueñas said. When most of the guards left, detainees told the lone remaining officer to leave. “She left because she [saw] it was escalating out off control.” Detainees then barricaded the door, he said.

Dueñas said guards dressed in helmets and body armor arrived and unsuccessfully tried to talk with the detainees, then threw what he described as three grenades — one that gave off smoke and two that emitted something like tear gas. (GEO did not respond to a question about what kind of chemical agents were used.)

“You could smell it from across the hallway,” Dueñas said. Guards then led detainees, “coughing and choking,” out of the unit in handcuffs.

Tim Warden-Hertz, directing attorney in the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project’s Tacoma office, said one of the organization’s lawyers talked to a client from the affected unit Thursday. That client echoed Dueñas’ account in several ways, including by describing detainees as upset, officers responding by taking items out of the unit, and detainees shutting the door and getting hit with “gas bombs.”

Warden-Hertz said the use of gas in a confined space is “incredibly troubling.”

The account relayed by Warden-Hertz did not mention an inspection or confiscated soda bottles setting off the confrontation. Rather, the client said detainees in the unit were on a hunger strike and demanding to talk to ICE.

Dueñas said he and other detainees in his unit are also on a hunger strike, in protest of miserable conditions that include food that is undercooked, inadequately portioned and erratically delivered. He said one day this week, guards served dinner at 8:30 p.m., seven hours after lunch.

Mora Villalpando, of La Resistencia, said at least 100 detainees are on a hunger strike as of Friday. The organization and detainees have reported wave after wave of hunger strikes for years, often refuted by GEO and ICE.

While detainees have long complained about conditions, the situation seems to have worsened of late. In January, Ferguson sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general calling for an investigation into “unsanitary living conditions” and how GEO actions in Tacoma have “put detainee health, safety, and welfare at risk.”

Ferguson accused GEO of retaliating over a lawsuit he brought against the company in 2017, saying its $1-a-day voluntary work program violated minimum wage law. Ferguson won the case in 2021, and it’s now under appeal.

In the meantime, GEO suspended the program instead of paying detainee workers more. And according to Ferguson, the company has failed to make up for the lost labor, resulting in filthy surroundings, poor food quality and inadequate laundry services. Even though GEO eventually hired a cleaning company, detainees report cleaners come as little as once a week and work “quickly and superficially,” the attorney general wrote.

GEO denies the allegations, saying: “We have taken all necessary action to ensure that facility sanitation levels and food service operations and quality are maintained at the facility in accordance with all applicable federal sanitation and food service standards.”

Washington lawmakers passed a bill in 2021 banning most privately run detention centers. GEO sued, and the litigation is ongoing. The 1,575-bed facility, whose population plummeted to about 200 as ICE scaled back operations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, currently holds about 600 detainees, according to the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project.

If we did away with it near all together, there would be chaos for a short time, but things would settle and there would be in all reality no real difference, other than the tax payer not paying a massive amount of money for what amounts to a huge dog and pony show.

Realize, you damn near had no border up until 1969 when Nixon began “operation intercept.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Intercept

Ironically just like Covid and most the measures there, this too was politically motivated, cost the tax payer an enormous amount, and achieved absolutely NOTHING!

Just like the TSA which costs the tax payer ~$9 billion a year and that was a few years back, which in 20 years caught ZERO (that’s right, as in none) terrorists, the “war on drugs” et al is a colossal waste of time and money.

However, it strikes a cord with a certain voting group that no differently than liberals looking for their solution from government want to fix this drug problem with more police, borders, laws, prisons...

Net results of 60 years “war on drugs?” You be the judge.

Here is the problem with all this border garbage:

1. It’s easy as hell to get drugs under and over that idiotic border, they do it with tunnels and drones.

2. What is required to truly seal that border up is out of scope. Meaning you cannot do it within a budget and without disrupting commerce nor the movement of free and legal citizens beyond what is reasonable.

- 35,000 trailer semi trucks cross that border EVERY DAY! https://explore.dot.gov/views/BorderCrossingData/Annual?%3Aembed=y&%3AisGuestRedirectFromVizportal=y (that’s in a year by border crossing)

- 515,000 people cross that border EVERY DAY! Realize you have many people with family in Mexico, or in the US, US manufacturing in Mexico, and Mexicans legally working in the US, some crossing the border daily for their work.

- You have rail going both ways, roughly 800,000 rail wagons a year.

- You have planes going both ways.

- You have boats, container and cruise ships going both ways.

- You have a border that’s 1,951 miles long and in some places people and buildings living right up against the border (Tijuana / Mexicali...etc.).

Point being, trying to really seal this up without causing major disruptions in commerce or to peoples lives who are law abiding is an impossible task. All you can do is make a big show at the major border crossings while 60 miles to the West your border is Swiss-Cheese.

When so called conservative politicians appeal to a certain base which wants more big government spending and the invasion into peoples lives by sealing up that border, they are appeasing and pandering, but accomplishing little. Sure, they can create spread sheets and pretend that they did something claiming they put this or that number of folks in prison or deported... but in reality for everyone caught another will fill their place. The true determining variable even for illegal immigration is the availability of jobs and ironically that is an area neither party wants to touch since it would impact campaign donors/financiers. When the jobs dry up as with the economic downturn years past, you will see a corresponding drop in illegals coming to the US. It is after all “economics” which attracts most of these people.

***If you truly want to deal with the illegal issue, then target their ability to get a job, which is easily done, but avoided by BOTH parties. Do you really want to piss on the feet of the guy paying for your campaign/party?

***Likewise, any true positive results in a “war on drugs” would be by addressing the demand, right here in the US. As long as people can make easy money, fast, with huge profit margins... no special skills required, you will have someone wanting to do it and you can build more prisons all you want, you’ll just fill them up too.

This makes for great headlines: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/06/americas/el-chapo-son-arrest-mexico-prison-intl/index.html

But the truth is just like we took out his father, even if we take out the son, someone else will take that role and that has been the case since about 1969 when we started this insanity under Nixon. It’s not going to stop, even if you make the punishment more severe, put more folks on the border, or throw more good money at law enforcement for anti-drug operations, build more prisons... You have a huge demand and potential to make a lot of money, someone is going to do it.

However, in the meantime, it appears that we would rather play pretend for the TV cameras and put guys with multi-cam uniforms on the border to “show action,” no differently than Cuomo showed action during Covid by killing senior citizens with his bad decisions (but he showed action!): https://www.statnews.com/2021/02/26/cuomos-nursing-home-fiasco-ethical-perils-pandemic-policymaking/ or Biden “showed action” with his vaccine mandate. You need to realize, when politicians make bad decisions like this, there are real consequences to peoples lives. There were people who had delays in getting treatment for cancer and heart disease because of the disruptions caused by these fools wanting to make a spectacle out of this. People saw their family businesses go broke, others lost their jobs, privacy rights were shat on, kids lost a year of education... and what did these assholes (sorry for the vulgar expression but it’s appropriate) accomplish? Did they flatten their curve in a few weeks? Were the Covid fatalities and was the mortality rate truly as high as claimed initially? Did the social distancing really accomplish anything? What about the silly masks, did that bring anything? Closing beaches? Restaurants?... The border is no different in that much of what you hear is political advertising and the facts and figures are twisted either way, may it be this stupid article using emotions to victimize people, or the other side which will latch onto some murder or rape and over play that hand for their political cause.

The real problem is that some issues are not dealt with pragmatically.

They become rallying points for various opposing sides that plant their flag but no longer truly look for solutions.

3. If you want the best marijuana, it comes from the US, to include Mexico where they sell US pot (which costs more) because it’s medical grade. Believe it or not, for pot it’s actually the other way around, but our retard government war on drugs heroes aren’t going to advertise that minor fact. Most the weapons used by the cartels, where do you think they come from?

4. For some in the US illegal substances such as steroids (which are over the counter in Mexico), folks simply cross the border, take a shot and then travel back the same day. Usually the power-lifters and bodybuilders doing this only need a shot a week or even monthly if it’s certain types that slowly releases.

The point being that this is far more complex than people want to pretend and it actually goes both ways. Sadly, politics seems to follow nature in that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, so as the US begins to do all these stupid things, the Mexicans respond in kind. We set up an idiotic checkpoint 26 miles inside the country (everyone knows it’s there) and then the Mexicans have to set up their checkpoint South of the border...

***Sadly all that is accomplished is making a hassle for folks and a big show for senior bureaucrats and politicians, nothing else.

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