Tacoma, WA – On Sunday, July 26, more than 30 community members rallied in the summer heat to demand the release of Felix Alvarez Ponce and all those detained at the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC). The protest marks the fifth month that Felix Ponce Alvarez has been detained in the NWDC, and of his fighting his detention.

The rally began with the crowd chanting their demand to “Free Felix!” and “Free them all.” The chants became so loud that Ponce called and told his family that he could hear the crowd inside the detention center.

Lane Parish, an organizer with Pierce County Immigration Alliance, shared the words Alvarez asked to be shared with the crowd. “Inside this detention center, conditions are poor. Many people get sick often, who were healthy before. I have been sick four times since February. The guards are often cruel, intentionally humiliating the people here.”

Parish also shared on behalf of Alvarez the impact his detention had on his family and community, including missing his brother’s passing, family birthdays, holidays, weddings, graduation and several months of his daughter’s first year of life.

“If someone asked me if I believe ICE and GEO facilities should be shut down, my answer is yes, I say 10,000 times, yes,” stated Parish.

This action is only the most recent of a long history of community organization against the NWDC.

Joseph Ostheller, a member of FRSO’s Seattle district, chronicled the detention center's origins and its track record of inhumane treatment, stating, “This concentration camp – the Northwest Detention Center – broke ground in 2004 to serve a then-new agency in the U.S. Government: Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It has been right here in Tacoma through five presidential administrations, four mayors, and truly countless abductions.”

“GEO Group brought in $2.6 billion last year on imprisoning our neighbors – and profits of $254 million,” Ostheller continued. “These profits were scraped out of our community by charge-by-the-minute phone calls, inedible food, medical neglect, and even forcing detainees to work inside the facility for less than a dollar a day.”

The immigrant community in Tacoma, along with the other major cities in the U.S., has been hard at work in response to the recent surge of ICE activity that is a result of the DHS ordering an increase of daily detentions to 2000 arrests a day, a doubling of the previous quota ICE was carrying out.

Anyelia Brown, who spoke on behalf of the local Adopt a Corner group and the rapid response network, stated, “Several of our community members right here in Tacoma have been taken by ICE from the South Tacoma Home Depot while looking for work and trying to provide for their families. These are skilled laborers, longtime community members, and hard workers who are just trying to get by while navigating language barriers, wage theft, health issues and immigration terror.”

Organizers across the U.S. have been documenting similar patterns regarding the operations of ICE’s immigration terror. In contrast to the mass arrests prevalent during the start of Trump's deportation campaign, ICE has switched to tactics that bring less attention to the news, opting to detain civilians through traffic stops and the interception of individuals attending court, or in areas with sparse density to avoid being tracked. Felix is among these individuals who were unlawfully brought into detention while going through his immigration hearings.

Catelynn Henion, an organizer with the Pierce County Immigration Alliance, spoke against the fear tactics that ICE implements with their operations, “I know that our neighbors should not be locked inside a detention center. I know that our neighbors shouldn’t be gunned down in the street by ICE. I know that people deserve dignity and a life where they don’t live in fear that they will be locked up in a place where people are abused and not given adequate access to medical care. I know that the people locked up inside this detention center are workers, parents, friends, family. I know the loss of them in our community is felt deeply and widely.”

Catelynn Henion stated, “It is regular people, people like Felix, people like you, people like me, that will make a change. Not once has the city, the state, or the federal government given us anything because they felt like it! Everything we have won is because ordinary people fought for it!”

#TacomaWA #WA #ImmigrantRights #ICE