Free Republic

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...

SEATTLE - A longtime activist for illegal immigrants in the Northwest says she herself is now facing deportation. Maru Mora-Villalpando, a native of Mexico City who has been in the U.S. for more than 25 years, said Tuesday that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has given her a notice to appear before an immigration judge. She says she believes ICE is targeting her because of her activism. She leads an organization called Northwest Detention Center Resistance, which was created in 2014 when detainees at the privately run immigration detention facility in Tacoma began a series of hunger strikes to protest...