by Luna Reyna

Twenty years ago, the Tacoma City Council unanimously approved the creation of a federal detention center on Tacoma’s tideflats without the slightest objection from community members. What nobody anticipated at the time was that this federal detention center would become a focal point for detention abolitionists and human rights activists across the nation. This facility is now known as the Northwest ICE Processing Center (NWIPC) and it is run by GEO Group, the largest private prison company in the country. Accusations of human rights violations, followed by countless lawsuits, have remained constant since the facility was built.