UW Report Reveals Neglect in Tacoma Police's Immigration Lockup Responses

Over ten years of 911 call logs and law enforcement inquiries related to the federally operated immigration detention facility run by private entities in Tacoma reveal a trend of inadequate responses from authorities regarding allegations of mistreatment and attacks, as highlighted in a recent University of Washington study.

Researchers with UW’s Center for Human Rights found that the Tacoma Police Department was less likely to contact alleged victims of crimes at the facility when that person was someone detained there compared to when victims were facility staff.

The report Published on Thursday, the findings indicate instances where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement along with the GEO Group, which operates the Northwest ICE Processing Center, dissuaded Tacoma law enforcement from looking into alleged criminal activities. As per the report, this frequently resulted in the police deciding against taking additional steps.

This also brought attention to instances where ICE or GEO undermined the reliability of victims or claimed they were conducting internal investigations, even when the accused parties included facility staff members. For instance, The 2018 case resulting in litigation , researchers wrote that a man who reported to police that he was beaten by facility guards during a hunger strike appeared to have been placed in solitary confinement for 20 days as retaliation for speaking to law enforcement.

"The moment has arrived for Tacoma officials to guarantee they implement strong measures to secure equal legal protections for all city residents, including those held by ICE at the Northwest Detention Center," stated UW professor Angelina Snodgrass Godoy in a press release.

Godoy emphasized that action was crucial since ICE plans to continue its operations at the Tacoma facility until 2040. The agency's ten-year agreement with GEO to manage the site comes to an end in September.

The Tacoma Police Department did not promptly reply on Thursday when contacted for comments. Similarly, neither ICE nor the GEO Group responded to their respective requests for commentary.

The Northwest ICE Processing Center detains individuals who are believed to be in the country unlawfully or those waiting for deportation. It has a capacity for 1,575 detainees , placing it among the largest ICE detention facilities in the nation. It’s the only such facility in the Pacific Northwest.

Here’s what Tacoma’s U.S. Representative Emily Randall observed during her visit to an ICE detention facility.

As stated by University of Washington scholars, ICE and GEO guidelines require reporting every possible crime to local authorities for separate investigation by the police. Concurrently, both ICE and GEO possess their distinct protocols aimed at addressing violent incidents inside the premises.

The description of this system can be found in ICE’s Performance-Based National Detention Standards. Officials from The GEO Group have previously mentioned these standards. strictly govern how it operates the facility with on-site federal contract monitors.

Researchers from UW indicate that the dual-system approach intended for addressing reports of violence doesn't align with real-world practices. According to their findings, both GEO and ICE staff frequently inform Tacoma police that an investigation is unnecessary since they are managing the incident themselves.

In other cases, the police told people calling to report a crime that they didn’t have jurisdiction over crimes committed at the facility or referred them to various federal authorities. The report states that happened at least 12 times from 2021 through 2024.

The researchers’ report analyzed a total 157 incidents from 2015 to 2025.

La Resistencia, an immigrant-rights group that advocates for closing the detention facility and ending deportations, said in a news release that the researchers’ findings were nothing new.

“We have known about these abuses happening every day for years, and no one has done anything,” said Liliana Chumpitasi, a leader of the group. “Unfortunately, the detainees have no protection. This place should be shut down right now before someone else dies.”

Four deaths have been reported at the facility since it opened in 2004, two of which happened last year. In 2006, a 42-year-old man died of coronary artery disease. In 2018, a 40-year-old man held in solitary confinement died by suicide. In March last year, 61-year-old Charles Leo Daniel died of cardiovascular disease.

In October, 36-year-old Jose Manuel Sanchez-Castro died in the facility. His cause of death remains pending, according to the Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office. A 911 call from a nurse at the detention center reported he was experiencing fentanyl withdrawal and that he’d arrived at the facility less than a week earlier.