The following is a March 11, 2024 press release from La Resistencia about the hunger strikes, attempted suicides, and death at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington. Contact: Maru Mora Villalpando (206) 251-6658 Or email : http://info@laresistencianw.org.
Editor’s Note: Private prison corporations, like the GEO Group that runs the NWDC center, have pocketed billions from ICE detention center contracts in the past two decades.
TACOMA, WA — On Monday early morning around 3AM a young man attempted suicide using a bed sheet as a rope, tied to the rail of the second story floor of Unit B3 of the infamous Northwest Detention Center (NWDC). A person from the same unit called La Resistencia to report the event: “I was asleep when others woke me up, some tried talking to him, he looked calm. About 5 GEO guards showed up with cameras and took him away. We don’t know where he is.”
A second suicide attempt occurred today at 6:20PM. La Resistencia received messages and calls from unit B3 reporting this second incident in Unit B1- another young man also tied a bed sheet from the rail and jumped onto the first floor. GEO guards took him in a stretcher outside the unit. Another witness from unit B3 saw the young man in the stretcher with his eyes closed and his foot moving repeatedly. At 7:05PM La Resistencia members witnessed 3 Tacoma Police Department patrol cars leaving NWDC following a Tacoma Fire Department truck and an ambulance where they could see a person in a stretcher.
This attempt suicide comes on the recent death of Charles Leo Daniel, a 61-year-old man from Trinidad and Tobago that was in ICE custody for nearly four years, and based on La Resistencia’s accounts by people detained, most of that time Mr. Daniel was placed in segregation, which is a practice known to be a torture like setting due to the isolation and mistreatment by GEO guards.
The unit B3 is the first unit that started the current strike that began last Friday with over 70 people detained after learning of the death of an immigrant detained in the same facility. As of this evening the total number of people in hunger strike grew to 200. This is the third hunger strike so far this year.
Since Friday the hunger strikers demand their immediate release due to months of detention without resolution to their cases, inhumane and unbearable conditions, and now the fear of dying under Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody, as it happened to the Charles Leo Daniel in segregation last Thursday.
La Resistencia will hold daily vigils at NWDC, as they do during the many detainee-led hunger strikes in the facility, at 7PM PST today to hold GEO Group and ICE accountable for the death of a migrant in their custody, the group demands an immediate public response from the Washington State Congressional delegation as well as an independent investigation, and a congressional hearing on all the inhumane conditions people detained face daily and now the imminent danger of death at NWDC.
La Resistencia is a grassroots organization in Washington state led by undocumented people in solidarity with detainees at Northwest Detention Center, fighting for the closing of the facility and an end to all detentions and deportations
