Latino youth prepare to fight back to shutdown immigrant detention center

On Monday, June 10, 2024, youth leaders from Latinos Unidos Siempre (LUS) gathered to make posters and signs for the upcoming #FreeThemAll caravan to the Northwest Detention Center (NDC) in Tacoma, Washington.

The NDC is a privately-run detention center holding immigrants detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). For many of these youth, the journey to advocate for its shutdown is personal and triggering to their emotional health.

A LUS youth leader, Alondra Sanchez, has an uncle who has been held at the NDC for almost seven months. LUS and other partners --along with Oregon Project Voice-- will drive on Saturday, June 15, 2024 to the NDC where they will advocate for alternatives to detention and deliver letters of hope and encouragement to the detained immigrants.

I interviewed Alondra about why it’s important to shut down the Northwest Detention Center and the personal impact to her family.

What would you like others to know about why it’s important to shut down the Tacoma Detention Center? Why is bringing attention to it important?

It's important to shut down the Tacoma center due to all the f**ked up things that are going on in there. About two weeks ago, someone recently passed away there, and it shows that people are not getting the things that they need or the help that they need inside there.

They’re held in a detention center where they get no food, they get no... like there’s no reason to be in there. Instead of investing our own tax monies into something that will do no help, or its just like a real f**ked up system in there, you know. 

Do you have family or friends, or do you know of anyone who’s currently being held at the Northwest Detention Center? What have you heard about the conditions that they live in?

About five months ago, we got a call from my godmother and godbrother that my uncle got detained by ICE outside of his apartment. I was so confused because I thought Oregon was a Sanctuary State, and that shouldn’t be happening. It was weird and very confusing.

What he was charged with was pretty bad, and it was obviously not true, and it was all cleared. And he’s still being held there which I still don’t understand if everything was cleared. It’s like they’re not doing their job correctly -- keeping him in there when obviously everything is clear.

For the stuff that has been going on in there, I got to be in a call with him about a month ago and he told me that. I was able to give him money, but it took awhile to get that information. I tried contacting the ICE detention center and they wouldn’t give me that information. They told me I would have to go in there and they only have so many appointment dates.

I contacted La Resistencia [an AFSC partner and the lead organization in Tacoma fighting to shut down the NDC] and they put me in touch with a contact. The way it looks like in there, he’s told me that it’s pretty f**ked up. They obviously don’t give them food, and if they do give them food, it’s like pretty s***ty food, disgusting food that has been old or like literally has mold.

They said that they treat people badly. They treat them as they’re labelled, depending on what they’re in for, and he’s been treated really bad. He’s been there for seven months. Yeah, it’s bad.

If the Northwest Detention Center didn’t exist, what else could we spend money on that could help bring healing and benefit more people in our community? Why is funding other community alternatives to prisons important? 

Instead of our money going into prisons, ICE detention centers, juvenile detention centers, it should be reinvested into mental health resources.

We (LUS) don’t have a lot of organizations that could help the community with mental health resources. We just need a lot of support and mental health resources. Places where it could help people with the type of addiction that they have as well and putting money into stuff that would benefit us as people of color.

It’s important to prevent people from getting into the system and being deported. Everyone knows that the system is a real f**ked up place and that they don’t do anything, but they only say that they’ll help you without preparing you to get the resources that you need.

I just don’t think it should be a thing and I don’t wish upon anybody to be in there. The money that we give for detention centers from our taxes -- that money should go into more mental health resources.