Immigrants Held in Private Northwest Detention Center Report Death, Suicide Attempts Amid Crackdown

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At one of the largest for-profit immigrant detention centers in the country, human rights advocates report, there were two suicide attempts Monday, just hours apart. The privately run Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, the site of multiple hunger strikes to protest inhumane conditions over the years, also reported 61-year-old Charles Leo Daniel from Trinidad and Tobago died at the facility last week. He had been detained for about four years and was in solitary confinement at NWDC when he was found unresponsive Thursday in what is suspected to be another suicide. This all comes as a federal judge blocked Washington state from fully enforcing a law intended to increase oversight at the for-profit immigrant jail, run by GEO Group. This recent string of events reveals "the importance and the urgency to shut down the detention center now," says La Resistencia's Maru Mora Villalpando, who explains why immigrants are vulnerable and used for votes, for political gain and as scapegoats. "We are in this midst of horrible, horrible situations in detention centers, at the border, in the countries where people need to flee, because it's working for corporations and for governments. … That's why we're not waiting for the government to solve this. We have to save ourselves."

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