On March 3, the King County Council passed Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda’s emergency one-year moratorium blocking permits to expand or create new detention facilities within unincorporated King County, whether for permanent or temporary use, to prevent the siting of potential Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers. Mosqueda’s measure comes as news of the federal government exploring siting yet another facility in the Pacific Northwest hit the internet and airwaves.
While King County acted relatively swiftly, Pierce County and Tacoma have been more circumspect. Pierce County — where the current detention center is sited — won’t consider adopting an ordinance that would prohibit a new detention facility in areas within County jurisdiction until March 24.
The state’s existing facility — known officially as the Northwest ICE Processing Center and colloquially as the Northwest Detention Center — is located in Tacoma, the largest city in Pierce County. Just a few weeks prior to King County Council’s passage of the moratorium, The Urbanist had already been seeking answers from Pierce County officials about actions planned to protect immigrants, and whether they could or would prevent an expansion of the federal government’s detention capabilities here in the Pacific Northwest.
Governor Bob Ferguson also broached the topic at a press conference in late January, where he discussed working with local jurisdictions to protect immigrants, but stopped short of making any specific commitments under the auspices of not giving opponents the state’s playbook. He also didn’t address the topic of detention centers, despite the contentious presence of the detention center in Tacoma, and the Trump administration’s well-documented penchant for sweeping up people with no criminal record.
Officials seemed hesitant to give The Urbanist a solid answer about the detention center or preventing the federal government from expanding detention capabilities in the South Sound.
The lack of a clear plan is concerning to Josefina Mora-Cheung, the organizing director for immigrants rights group La Resistencia, which is led by people whom immigration enforcement have detained or otherwise harmed. But she also said that disincentivizing the federal government from building and operating a detention center is difficult.
“This is something that La Resistencia is definitely very concerned about. We've worked really, really hard to prevent detention expansion for the past decade in Washington State,” Josefina Mora-Cheung said. “Now we see that the threat is really looming. And it really just shows how the violence and threats have escalated on a national level that even a state that is supposed to protect immigrants in Washington is now under threat of detention expansion, even after all these years of hard work.”
A private, for-profit global detention corporation, GEO Group, operates the detention center in Tacoma, contracting with ICE to allow the federal government to detain undocumented immigrants. Despite trumped-up federal claims of arresting and detaining dangerous criminals, the people whom ICE arrests are often nonviolent and sometimes don’t even have any offenses on their records.
The unsanitary and sometimes deadly conditions inside the detention center are, at this point, well-known and well-documented, thanks to groups like La Resistencia, whose mission it is to shut down the detention center. Additionally, ICE is increasingly indefinitely — and, therefore, illegally — detaining people, creating all sorts of excuses to keep them imprisoned and intentionally making them miss court hearings where judges may rule whether they can be released.
While Mora-Cheung believes that Washington is in a “unique position,” because the state has made it harder for the detention center to operate as a privately-owned detention facility, she also highlighted that if the federal government pursues a federally-owned and -operated detention center “that really changes things.”
“What we've been seeing not only here in Washington, but on a national level is this battle between state and federal agencies and how much the state is able to control what the feds are able to do here in our local municipalities,” Mora-Cheung said. “Because of the fight that we've put up here in Washington State, I believe that it will be really interesting to see whether the feds will actually try to not do a private detention facility and do a federally operated one simply because of the barriers that we have been leading here in Washington State.”
Washington State's response
In theory, one way the state could shut down the detention center is by rescinding GEO Group’s license to operate here. Since the attorney general would be the one to rescind that license, The Urbanist reached out to Attorney General Nick Brown’s office to ask whether he had considered rescinding the license; and, if he had, why he had not opted to go that route.
But, as it turns out, a 2022 Ninth Circuit Court decision shut off that route.
“Unfortunately,” Attorney General’s office spokesperson Nina Jenkins explained, “we can’t rescind GEO’s license to operate because of a separate Ninth Circuit decision—GEO v. Newsom, which struck down a California law that sought to ban private immigration prisons.”
In that decision, the court ruled that California’s ban on private, for-profit prisons was likely unconstitutional, because it violated the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution by barring the federal government from making decisions about immigration detention.
However, Jenkins said, the attorney general “shares the public’s concern about GEO Group and the conditions under which people are being held at the Northwest ICE Processing Center. We have been engaged in litigation for nearly a decade with GEO Group, fighting to enforce state law against this private prison contractor.”
Jenkins highlighted a 2021 win against GEO Group, in which a district court judge ruled that the for-profit detention corporation had to pay $23.2 million for unlawful labor practices within the Northwest Detention Center. She also pointed to last year’s Ninth Circuit ruling that mandated GEO Group to follow the same health and safety standards as private residential treatment facilities, and that the state must be allowed in to inspect conditions there.
So far, GEO Group still has not complied with this ruling, and the Ninth Circuit in late February struck down its request for a pause while the corporation prepares a petition against the ruling for U.S. Supreme Court review.
Legislators could impose daily, per-person fines against GEO Group, but have not brought that to the table. However, this session, they have opted to bring forward legislation to fine the detention corporation for not allowing state health inspectors inside.
Hannah Sabio-Howell, who recently announced her candidacy for the 43rd District, told The Urbanist that she used to volunteer with World Relief. One of the services she performed was waiting for people outside the detention center. She recalled that ICE would often do it “in the cruelest possible way.”
ICE would keep them for months or more at a time, she said, and then abruptly release them, often without transportation, even though they did not speak English and had no way to figure out how to ask for help. They had no money or phone, either, she said. Part of her job was to help them get where they needed to go, sometimes by using a translator app.
“That is just barely scratching the surface of how cruel — and unnecessarily so — that facility and, in general, ICE detention facilities are. It's inhumane, it's thoughtless, and it's a blight on our community and on our state,” Sabio-Howell said. “I think any lack of urgency around addressing ICE's presence, […] addressing the build-out of detention centers is unacceptable behavior from a […] state with a Democratic governor and Democratic leadership in both the House and the Senate.”
Sabio-Howell said that while she isn’t too familiar with what legislators can do about the detention center or detention expansion, the legislature still can do more than it has in order to protect immigrant communities. This includes banning face coverings, which the legislature has already done (and which Sabio-Howell said was a good first step), as well as protecting community areas and stripping incentives for companies that work with ICE. The state could also better protect residents’ data from federal immigration access.
While the state does have the Keep Washington Working Act that — in theory — prohibits sharing residents’ information with federal agents that would allow them to make those arrests, as mentioned earlier, the state’s Department of Licensing continues to share licensing data with federal immigration agents. Separately, University of Washington researchers revealed last year that several law enforcement agencies have been sharing information with immigration agents in violation of state law.
As of yet, Ferguson has not prevented the Department of Licensing from sharing private driver data, despite the practice violating state law. In the face of a recent protest outside the department, Ferguson issued a statement saying that he’s working on blocking immigration agents’ access to residents’ licensing data.
Sabio-Howell also said that the state could create pathways to sue ICE for violating constitutional rights.
Tacoma's response
Tacoma Mayor Anders Ibsen said that he has personally spoken with Ferguson and Brown, and is working to make Tacoma part of the regional strategy to keep people safe and protect their constitutional rights. The City aligns with state law, he said, and has begun planning for the possibility of large-scale federal deployment like Minneapolis saw.
“We do not enforce federal civil immigration law, and our police and City departments are focused on public safety, access to services, and protecting the rights and dignity of all residents,” Ibsen said. “I am seeking a more comprehensive understanding of how the Tacoma Police Department responds if community members report alleged ICE activity, and to help the community understand what can be expected in that response.”
He also highlighted the City’s recently launched Immigration Resources webpage, which provides detailed immigration resources and City-specific resources for residents, and said that the City continues to have conversations with different organizations, such as the Pierce County Immigration Alliance.
“The City Council has also approved funding previously to support deportation defense, and recently authorized additional funding for AidNW to support their phone calls to detainees because we heard from advocates how important that contact is,” Ibsen said. “I am continuing to explore all legal options that we can take to be prepared and ready to support our community.”
But the answer to the question of preventing the federal government from plunking down yet another detention center within City limits was less clear.
City communications specialist Maria Lee told The Urbanist that the City prevailed against GEO Group in a lawsuit in 2021, a win that legally cemented the city’s 2017 zoning regulations that prohibit expansion at the site, capping its capacity.
However, Lee said that, while she appreciated that The Urbanist was looking for a simple answer to whether GEO could expand elsewhere in Tacoma, “property rights are extremely complex and there is always the potential for legal challenges. I also can’t speak to what other jurisdictions might allow. ”
Pierce County's response
Pierce County has a large immigrant and refugee population: as of 2023, the undocumented population stood at an estimated 26,000 people. Former Executive’s Office spokesperson Connor Davis (who has since moved to the Planning & Public Works Department) said that the County maintains a webpage tracking federal litigation that involves the County, and that it provides funding to community organizations that serve immigrant and refugee households.
“The County has taken steps to affirm its compliance with Keep Washington Working and ensure County resources and employees are not used for federal immigration enforcement,” Davis said.
Davis also highlighted County Executive Ryan Mello’s executive directive from last March, which provides County employees guidance on how to handle federal immigration enforcement actions, and the Pierce County Council’s passage of a resolution stating that the County neither collects nor shares information about a person’s immigration status, nor does it participate in non-criminal immigration enforcement activities.
The Urbanist asked how the County is working with the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office, given that Sheriff Keith Swank has repeatedly gone on-record about wanting to work with ICE agents and actively contacting federal officials and immigration officers. However, Davis did not address that, deferring to the Sheriff's Office.
Davis said that the County is “aware” of the federal government’s pre-solicitation notice seeking to create another detention facility in the state, and noted that “[t]here are limited siting options for any facility of this magnitude in Pierce County.”
But he didn’t go any further, instead saying that “[i]t would be premature to speculate on if or where a potential facility could be located in Pierce County, and whether the Executive or Council would need to be involved.”
In unincorporated Pierce County, the Pierce County Council is responsible for setting zoning regulations governing land use. Like the King County Council, the Pierce County Council may also vote to enact emergency ordinances, as it did in 2024 by voting to remove barriers to emergency shelters in response to the homelessness crisis.
When asked whose job it would be to prevent further expansion of federal detention capabilities in the County, Davis suggested that The Urbanist contact the Tacoma Pierce-County Health Department or the Washington State Department of Health.
Tacoma Pierce-County Health Department largely deferred to the state health department.
“Washington State Department of Health (DOH) has jurisdiction over any health concerns at Northwest Detention Center (NWDC),” health department spokesperson Kenny Via said. “We support DOH in a limited capacity by providing food inspections for the cafeteria at the NWDC. In this role, our inspectors have not had any issues performing their duties.”
Washington State Department of Health
Kara Kostanich, a public information officer with the department, said they could not answer The Urbanist’s questions, citing an ongoing lawsuit between the state and GEO Group. She also said that the state department of health is not the right agency to contact about a possible expansion of the NWIPC.
“I can share that we have never been able to inspect inside the facility after HB 1470 was passed. And we have made roughly [eight] attempts to do so,” Kostanich said, citing legislation the state passed in 2023 allowing state health officials inside the detention center. “Any more questions about the litigation should go to the state Attorney General’s Office.”
Other potential sites
King County and Pierce County aren’t the only places the federal government could put a new detention center, but they would have been the most likely, Mora-Cheung said, given their proximity to the King County Regional Airport, where ICE conducts its deportation flights.
But just because King County is out doesn’t mean the federal government has to look elsewhere. Mora-Cheung said that the Yakima Airport had agreed to take ICE deportation flights, when former King County Executive Dow Constantine had temporarily paused those flights out of the King County airport in 2019, following pressure from immigrants rights groups.
She also highlighted that the state can’t outright say: “No, you can't operate here.”
“We can put a lot of restrictions to make it more difficult,” Mora-Cheung explained, and pointed to HB 1470 as an example of a result of advocacy work. “That's something that we were able to achieve because as a privately owned business, it essentially operates just like any other [business] that has some kind of health safety standards.”
She also pointed to immigrants rights groups’ successful pressure on Ferguson in 2017, when he served as the state’s attorney general, to file a lawsuit against GEO Group for its $1-per-day work program. Again, because it was a private business, the state could argue that state law regarding private businesses therefore governed the private entity.
“That's something that would be a little bit more difficult in something like a federally operated detention center, which has its own ‘accountability oversight,’ although we know ICE has dismantled quite a few of its oversight committees, as well,” she explained. “That's not quite as strong as it was before. So, it is harder to fight against a federally operated detention center.”
Mora-Cheung said that she felt the public as a whole is waking up to harsh realities for immigrant communities, because federal immigration agents’ attacks have escalated, including targeting non-immigrants.
“People are finally realizing that this is what a community has been [living] with for decades. If we're seeing what's happening on the streets, what is it that we haven't seen behind closed doors? What is it that they're hiding from the public eye?” Mora-Cheung said. “With this new threat, it's really an opportunity for our local officials to really not only show that they are willing to protect our immigrant communities and every single immigrant that lives in our respective state, but [also] to collaborate together, because we see that there's a lot of possibilities of where this expansion could happen. […] It's a moment for Washington to really follow its values that it claims about being able to protect immigrants.”
Amy Sundberg
