TACOMA — At least 30 men detained in the Northwest Immigration and Customs Enforcement Processing Center in February were exposed to chemicals and told to “deal with it,” after detention officers deployed chemical agents at detainees in a unit directly below them, described one of the men, Jemal Houston-Brown.
Houston-Brown recalled in an interview how he and others in the unit struggled to breathe and pleaded with officials to get them out. In a grievance report he provided to The Seattle Times, detainees described experiencing respiratory distress after noticing a caustic aroma that appeared to be coming in from a ventilation system.
The grievances allege it wasn’t until a detainee began to hit and claw at the door to get out, and a lieutenant arrived to remove him because he was making a disturbance, that the men were taken elsewhere.
“You’re not treated like a person in here,” 52-year-old Houston-Brown said.
The chemical exposure incident, first publicly confirmed in February, is one of more than 70 uses of force analyzed in a University of Washington Center for Human Rights report released Monday, which notes some limitations with data and access to records. The report outlines three major areas of concern at the detention facility, which is operated by ICE and private company GEO Group: use of force against people with mental illnesses, use of force against people engaged in nonviolent protests or hunger strikes and officials’ failure to follow the facility’s own rules, further escalating cycles of cruelty.
The center reviewed ICE documents on use-of-force incidents — physical force and use of chemical agents — over the past seven years. Use of force was most likely to happen during a move of a person from one cell to another, the report found. The most extreme case involved a man who experienced 13 use-of-force incidents over a three-month period.
Guards used force frequently against people with serious mental disorders, according to the report. The incidents ranged from applying physical force to break up fights or stop self-harm, escalating deployment of chemical agents to get people to follow orders, to force-feeding a woman on a hunger strike.
The report describes inhumane practices immigrant rights advocates have been fighting against for decades, said Maru Mora Villalpando, a longtime community organizer with La Resistencia.
“It is by design,” she said, of the way people are treated at the 1,575-bed civil detention facility. “This is a very well-known agency that feels they’re immune to everything and untouchable.”
ICE spokesperson David Yost emailed a statement denying retaliation against people detained and protesting, stating all use of force is justified and those affected receive medical treatment. He said necessary “instances [of force] include self-defense or protection of others.”
“Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) is committed to ensuring that all those in its custody reside in safe, secure, and humane environments under appropriate conditions of confinement, and like all ICE detention facilities, the Northwest ICE Processing Center (NWIPC) adheres to ICE detention standards to meet these needs,” the statement reads.
Yost wrote that in the case of a hunger strike, ICE explains the negative effects of not eating to detainees and the facility does not retaliate in any way.
Yost declined to elaborate or comment specifically on force-feeding allegations or other uses of force mentioned in the UW report, including the chemical exposure noted in Houston-Brown’s grievance report.
The UW center’s report describes a woman who was on a hunger strike being force-fed in 2016, though it’s unclear what method ICE used. The facility has been known to insert nasogastric tubes to force-feed people, along with catheter lines, the report says.
In one use-of-force incident in 2017, a man on mental health decompensation watch banged his tray against the window of a medical observation unit, the report says. A guard then placed his forearm on the man’s neck to take him down, causing the man to hit his head and back on the bed frame and wall. The incident was found by ICE to have been an excessive use of force, but records did not mention any disciplinary action against the officer, the UW report said.
Peaceful protests like a hunger strike are protected under the U.S. Constitution, regardless of citizenship. Still, in the detention center, these actions are often interpreted as a threat to facility order, and thus justifies use of force by its standards, said the report’s primary author, Angelina Snodgrass Godoy, who is also the UW center’s director.
When over 120 people detained declared themselves on hunger strike in February 2018, GEO guards responded by using force against three men, the report says. A 2018 lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union also described use of force during that strike, alleging that a guard punched a participant, Jesus Chavez, and injured his eye.
Two years later, guards deployed multiple rounds of pepper balls at a man who was on a hunger strike and refusing a transfer to a medical housing unit, the UW report said.
By failing to address grievances from people detained and placing a lot of people who might be suffering from mental illnesses in solitary confinement, officials are feeding into a persistent cycle of force happening at the detention center, Snodgrass Godoy said.
Problems at the detention center escalate because staff ignore grievances and then respond with force when people become agitated, said Houston-Brown.
Houston-Brown filed multiple grievances, he said, over sanitary conditions and health hazards, only for most to remain unanswered. The only concerns that were marginally addressed had to do with detainees drinking from the same fountain where others had spit out bloody mouthwash after having their teeth pulled, he said.
“I was told that they ignored me because they thought I would’ve been deported soon anyway,” he said. “We’re like animals to them.”
The UW report also notes concerns over the lack of access to records and inadequate documentation at the facility, alleging the detention center often fails to keep track of use of force, medical follow-ups and responses to grievances.
Snodgrass Godoy said the UW center tried to speak with ICE officials for months, but they ultimately declined.
The state recently passed a bill tasking the Department of Health with inspecting the detention facility, though GEO Group filed a lawsuit in July challenging the legislation.
Snodgrass Godoy said agencies could have a hard time implementing or enforcing changes when ICE’s record-keeping is inadequate: For example, ICE failed to maintain records of a man who told the Tacoma Police Department that officers at the center placed a knee on his neck and twisted back his arms and shoulders, according to the report. He was eventually taken to Tacoma General Hospital for his injuries, the report said.
Discrepancies in records and oversight were also noted when private contractor Nakamoto visited the facility in 2019 and recorded two incidents of use of force involving chemicals while internal ICE records noted four. In 2022, Nakamoto reported zero incidents in March, though ICE internal records showed two.
“This sort of suggests this is a lawless space in which force — including violence, including the deployment of chemical weapons — is a regular facet of life there,” Snodgrass Godoy said. “There’s not really any reason to believe that there’s a rigorous system to ensure that [oversight is] being done adequately.”
Lawmakers in 2021 passed a bill seeking to close the privately run detention center by 2025, but it ultimately did not hold up after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a similar California law violates the supremacy clause of the Constitution, which limits states from interfering with federal government matters.
“ICE has been disturbingly successful in getting the general public to just look the other way,” Snodgrass Godoy said. “We need to all be vigilant and make sure that the laws we’ve passed through our own state legislature work.”
The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington on July 28 for the release of records related to February’s chemical exposure incident. The judge issued an order for parties to meet by mid-September.
The justifications for using chemical agents in February were contradictory, and ICE denied the accounts of people who were detained, said NWIRP Legal Director Matt Adams.
“What we want to do is start compiling documents so that we’re better positioned to hold them accountable and make sure the justifications for use of force are, in fact, reasonable,” he said.
