UW report finds ‘patterns of neglect’ in Tacoma police responses to immigration lockup

A decade of 911 call records and police investigations involving the privately-run federal immigration detention center in Tacoma show a pattern of neglect in police’s response to abuse and assault reports, according to a new University of Washington report.

Researchers with UW’s Center for Human Rights found that the Tacoma Police Department was less likely to contact alleged victims of crimes at the facility when that person was someone detained there compared to when victims were facility staff.

The report, published Thursday, found cases where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the federal contractor that runs the Northwest ICE Processing Center, the GEO Group, discouraged Tacoma police from investigating reported crimes. Often, according to the report, this led police to not take further action.

It also highlighted cases where ICE or GEO disparaged the credibility of victims or where the entities said they were investigating the reports in house, including in cases where facility staff were the alleged perpetrators. In one 2018 case that led to a lawsuit, researchers wrote that a man who reported to police that he was beaten by facility guards during a hunger strike appeared to have been placed in solitary confinement for 20 days as retaliation for speaking to law enforcement.

“The time is now for Tacoma authorities to ensure they take vigorous action to ensure equal protection of the laws to all residents of the city, including those detained by ICE at the [Northwest Detention Center],” UW professor Angelina Snodgrass Godoy said in a news release.

Godoy said action was particularly important because ICE has stated its intention to extend operations at the Tacoma facility into 2040. ICE’s 10-year contract with GEO to run the facility is set to expire in September.

In a statement, Christopher Ferreira, a GEO Group spokesperson, said GEO has comprehensive policies in place for the reporting and investigation of all incidents that occur at the center, including instances of assault and sexual assault. Ferreira said the policies are governed by Performance-Based National Detention Standards established by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

“GEO strongly disagrees with the allegations that have been made regarding the services we provide at the Northwest ICE Processing Center,” Ferreira said. “These allegations are part of a long-standing, politically motivated, and radical campaign to abolish ICE and end federal immigration detention by attacking the federal government’s immigration facility contractors.”

The Tacoma Police Department did not respond Thursday to a request for comment. ICE also did not respond to a request for comment.

The Northwest ICE Processing Center holds people who are suspected of being in the country illegally or awaiting deportation. It has a capacity for 1,575 detainees, placing it among the largest ICE detention facilities in the nation. It’s the only such facility in the Pacific Northwest.

According to UW researchers, ICE and GEO policies mandate that all potential crimes be reported to local law enforcement so police can independently investigate them. At the same time, ICE and GEO have their own set of procedures to investigate violence within the facility.

This system is described in ICE’s Performance-Based National Detention Standards. GEO Group officials have previously said those standards strictly govern how it operates the facility with on-site federal contract monitors.

UW researchers say that the two-track system for responding to reports of violence isn’t how it works in practice. The report found GEO and ICE personnel often tell Tacoma police they don’t need to investigate because they are handling the report.

In other cases, the police told people calling to report a crime that they didn’t have jurisdiction over crimes committed at the facility or referred them to various federal authorities. The report states that happened at least 12 times from 2021 through 2024.

The researchers’ report analyzed a total 157 incidents from 2015 to 2025.

La Resistencia, an immigrant-rights group that advocates for closing the detention facility and ending deportations, said in a news release that the researchers’ findings were nothing new.

“We have known about these abuses happening every day for years, and no one has done anything,” said Liliana Chumpitasi, a leader of the group. “Unfortunately, the detainees have no protection. This place should be shut down right now before someone else dies.”

Four deaths have been reported at the facility since it opened in 2004, two of which happened last year. In 2006, a 42-year-old man died of coronary artery disease. In 2018, a 40-year-old man held in solitary confinement died by suicide. In March last year, 61-year-old Charles Leo Daniel died of cardiovascular disease.

In October, 36-year-old Jose Manuel Sanchez-Castro died in the facility. His cause of death remains pending, according to the Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office. A 911 call from a nurse at the detention center reported he was experiencing fentanyl withdrawal and that he’d arrived at the facility less than a week earlier.