Mandy Manning, Congressional candidate Chris Armitage visit immigration detention facility in Tacoma

The former national teacher of the year and a Congressional candidate say a recent trip to a detention center in Tacoma has steeled their resolve to advocate change in the country’s treatment of immigrants.

Mandy Manning, the Ferris High School instructor who famously handed President Donald Trump letters authored by refugee and immigrant students while honored at the White House in 2018, joined Chris Armitage last weekend on a visit to the Northwest Detention Center, a privately owned detention facility operated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Armitage, who’s filed to run for Eastern Washington’s Congressional seat as a Democrat, said the pair met with a Jamaican woman named Karlena Dawson who is fighting her deportation.

“She’s lived in this country for 30 years. She’s a small-business owner, with multiple children,” Armitage said of Dawson.

Manning and Armitage met during an event sponsored by Fuse, a progressive advocacy group that has pushed for changes to the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration policies, including detention of families and children at the U.S./Mexico border. Manning tried to visit a facility in Texas last August as part of a group of educators who were ultimately turned away.

The facility in Tacoma is designed to hold 1,575 men and women, not children, according to a fact sheet presented to visiting media on a tour in September. The detention center, which is owned and operated by the GEO Group on behalf of ICE, has been the site of multiple reported hunger strikes and also an attempted fire-bombing in July. It has also been the site of political protests targeting the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

Manning said it was important to visit and share the stories of those detained inside, as the political winds continue to shift and the nation’s focus on detainees may have waned since it was a major issue in the summer of 2018.

“It’s really hard to really know what’s going on inside the detention centers, even the adult facilities,” Manning said.

The pair was aided in their visit by several pro-Democratic and pro-immigration reform groups, Armitage said. While both visitors described cordial guards and relatively clean conditions during their visit, they witnessed several young visitors also arrive to see detainees and heard stories about conditions that included moldy food service items, infrequent showers and lights left on all hours of the day.

In response to questions about detainee treatment and the allegations of mistreatment, a spokeswoman for ICE based in Seattle provided a lengthy emailed statement calling allegations of poor food quality “unfounded” and showing that the Tacoma facility passed health inspections in May. According to ICE, 36 medical/mental health professionals work in the facility and all detainees have access to 24-hour emergency care.

“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is committed to ensuring the welfare of all those in the agency’s custody, including providing access to necessary and appropriate medical care,” the statement reads, in part. “Comprehensive medical care is provided to all individuals in ICE custody.”

ICE also said it maintains a strict lighting policy in the facility to ensure detainee safety. Overhead lights are turned on at 5:30 a.m. and are turned off at 11:30 p.m., according to the statement. “Dimmed security lights” operate between 11:30 p.m. and 5:30 a.m., the agency says.

Armitage said he remained concerned about conditions inside the facility after speaking with Dawson.

“After World War II, nations around the world worked together to build standards for how people are treated, even if they’re detained,” Armitage said. “We need transparency, and we need protection. It’s the right thing to do, it’s the moral thing to do.”

Manning said she spoke to Dawson mostly about the effect of her incarceration on her children.

“At this point, they are 18 and over, but when she was originally incarcerated, her youngest was not yet out of high school,” Manning said. “They are surviving without the matriarch of their family.”

Dawson is appealing her deportation, according to federal court records. A panel called the Board of Immigration Appeals heard her case, and Dawson is now asking for a hearing before the U.S Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. Documents in that case are not available online, and they have to be accessed at the court’s headquarters in San Francisco per court rules.

Both Manning and Armitage said they intend to return to the detention center to visit others who have been detained while awaiting deportation proceedings.

“Not everybody who comes here needs to be a citizen,” said Armitage, who worked in base defense as a member of the U.S. Air Force. “They can contribute economically, and to building a stronger society.”

Manning said her main concern was the potential disruption to family life that the American detention policy has introduced for households across the country.

“I think we don’t think about the larger picture,” Manning said. “It’s not even just that it is impacting this family. Immigrant detention impacts all of society, all of our communities.”