Alert! A Timely Look Inside the NW Detention Center
Save 5:30 pm, Tuesday, Dec. 16 for a special one-hour presentation
As the League of Women Voters of Washington seeks national adoption of its new position on Immigrants, Lobby Team Issue Chair Lydia Zepeda will provide Washington League members with a special overview of conditions at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma.
The online webinar will be at 5:30 pm Tuesday, Dec. 16. Register here for the one-hour event. Because it will not be recorded, members are encouraged to set aside the date in advance. Attendance is limited to League members.
Until this year, the for-profit detention center was the only immigration detention center in the Pacific Northwest and one of the largest in the nation.
The facility detained fewer than 600 immigrants before February of this year, but it is now near capacity with 1,575 people. Staffing, supplies, and services have not kept pace with the population increases, prompting concerns about sanitation, medical care, mental health services, and safety, Zepeda said.
“Most of the people in detention have no criminal convictions, many are asylum seekers, and increasingly, immigrants with work permits and visas are being detained,” she added.
Co-author of the League study, Welcoming Immigrants to Washington, Zepeda is author of Bad Choices in Our Food System and has over 70 research publications about the economics of food production and consumption.
Zepeda is professor emerita of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She worked for the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization in Rome and has been a Fulbright Scholar in Spain and Costa Rica.
More information about the webinar is available from Zepeda at lzepeda@lwvwa.org