Washington’s immigrant rights orgs mobilize amid deportation push

The group, Advocates for Immigrants in Detention Northwest, provides reentry assistance to those released from the processing center. Volunteers now huddled under a nearby tent to escape the wind and rain as they watched for any motion from the detention facility. They held arms crossed and shoulders roused against the cold. 

Any second now.

Peering through the chain-link barriers, they spotted a detention officer emerge from a corner of the building with three other figures. Perkinson and a volunteer hurried to meet them at the gate. One released woman immediately hopped into a waiting car while the other two detainees followed toward the RV and tents. 

One newly released man broke ahead of the others as he recognized his brother waiting for him. The released man, who asked to be identified as “H” due to fear of retribution from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, went in for a tight embrace.

“Ta’ala … ta’ala” — “Come here, come here,” H said in Arabic, as his brother burrowed his head into the small of his neck.

AIDNW and its reentry services help anchor a web of independent community-based organizations around the state that work to backfill support gaps and monitor detainee treatment throughout the immigration enforcement system. Organizers who watchdog detention operations, deportation flights and legal proceedings all warned of new challenges and increased demand for aid amid the federal push to expand deportations. 

Perkinson walked H and his brother to their car, asking if H needed a warm meal, water, anything. The two bantered until H slyly asked for a cigarette. As a Marlboro Red dangled from his mouth, H showed Perkinson a bright pink sweater and beanie set he knitted for his unborn daughter while in ICE detention.

His release had come just weeks before his wife was due to give birth.

“Alhamdulillah, thank you God,” he pointed upward and said over and over again. “Alhamdulillah.”

Release and reentry

AIDNW maintains a permanent presence outside the detention center in an isolated area just off the Port of Tacoma’s industrial campus. In one tent, volunteers check in new releases. They offer flyers in a multitude of languages with instructions on how to request travel arrangements. The RV sits parked nearby, where Perkinson said released detainees can get “a warm welcome,” as well as food, clothing, luggage, Wi-Fi and whatever else they might need, every weekday from 2-7 p.m.

“We will always introduce ourselves as volunteers and say we’re not affiliated with ICE or GEO [Group],” Perkinson said, referring to the private detention-services company contracted with ICE to run the facility.

AIDNW formed back when the Tacoma detention center opened in 2004. Perkinson said local organizers felt “alarmed” by how little support immigrants received upon release, and mobilized to address those needs. They now offer help by providing fresh clothing, transportation, translation services, connecting with legal counsel and other assistance to released individuals sometimes left adrift near the Port grounds with limited resources. 

Cascade PBS sent the GEO Group a list of questions regarding the center’s treatment of detainees, its role in reentry support and other issues. GEO Group responded with a written statement and deferred any further questions to ICE.

“The support services GEO provides at the locations selected by ICE, including the Northwest ICE Processing Center, are governed by ICE’s detention standards,” a company spokesperson wrote. “GEO’s services are carefully monitored for quality by ICE personnel, who are onsite 24/7, and other entities within the Department of Homeland Security.”

Perkinson is currently the only full-time employee at AIDNW, having first started as a volunteer before working his way up to operations manager last year. 

A rotation of volunteers and community partners split their time among greeting newly released detainees, visiting and writing letters to immigrants in detention and offering a night or two in their host homes. AIDNW has about 20 committed visitation volunteers and pen pals who receive training, usually from a more experienced volunteer, on facility rules, what to talk about with detainees and how to properly check people into the welcome center. 

One common support service involves matching immigration documents to travel arrangements. When ICE releases someone before their court case is resolved, Perkinson said, they will get an ICE-issued ID instead of their original passport or driver’s license. AIDNW helps make sure their travel bookings match the new IDs. 

“We do often see [ICE] make spelling errors on those IDs, which is why it is so important to record the name exactly as appears on the ID for when we purchase a flight,” Perkinson explained. “Because, of course, if the name on the ID does not exactly match the name on the ticket, TSA will not let that person through security.”

AIDNW has also collected data on detainee release rates going back to at least January 2024. Perkinson said the number of daily releases peaked in November 2024 at about two dozen people, but the numbers have dwindled in recent months. Since President Donald Trump took office in January, Perkinson said he and the rest of AIDNW’s volunteers have seen no more than three releases in a single day from ICE detention.

“The number of people being released dropped sharply, down from two or three almost every day to one or two a couple times a week,” he said. “I did get confirmation from ICE personnel at this facility that that would be the new normal for us.”

AIDNW also gathers phone funds so detainees can reach attorneys through the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project — another group in their network which has long served as a first line of legal defense.

“We are a member of the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network,” Perkinson added. “We have invited them to speak at meetings in the past and community gatherings to help educate our volunteers about the wider network of immigration nonprofits and resources in Washington state.”

Flight monitoring

North of Tacoma, another grassroots organization follows the chain of federal deportation operations to the King County International Airport, where ICE has flown detainees in and out of the region since May 2023. From an observation room just off the tarmac, volunteers with La Resistencia independently watch and document deportation flights. 

In mid-February, volunteer coordinator Stan Shikuma said the flight observation team had just come off a week of record deportations. As a private charter plane with the deportation flight contractor GlobalX taxied into view, he called the control tower to adjust the angle on the live camera feeds to avoid a blinding glare from the winter sun. 

Shikuma then assigned University of Washington students to their observer roles. One would count detainees as they left the plane door and another would count them as they reached the bottom of the boarding ramp. 

The plane, coming in from one of the ICE Air hubs in  central Louisiana, was carrying transfers to now be detained in Tacoma. Shikuma, notepad and pen in hand, kept a close focus among the visual chaos. Suddenly a muddle of passengers, deportation officers and airport employees filled the screen — with shackles and plastic bags containing passengers' belongings being thrown around onto the tarmac.

“They move people around. They move people from within the United States,”  Shikuma later explained in an interview with Cascade PBS. “So, like, moving them from the border to a detention center — or from one detention and transferring to another detention center, or moving people from a detention center to a place where they can be deported.”

The detainee count crept up. Volunteers counted off 22, then 55, 73, until landing on a final count of 93. 

“The numbers have gone up — starting with the elections, but especially since Inauguration Day,” Shikuma said. “Last year, in 2024, it was not unusual to have maybe zero to 20 people being brought in from outside, and not unusual to see 20 to 40 people being put on to be taken somewhere else, either as transfers to a facility or deportation.”

Local flight data collected by La Resistencia showed more than 2,750 people deported out of the King County airfield aboard 101 flights between May 2023 and April 2025. Trump’s White House recently showcased one of these local flights in a social media video of shackled detainees that drew condemnation from Amnesty International USA. 

GlobalX did not respond to Cascade PBS’s request for comment.

Outside of its flight observation efforts, La Resistencia organizes protests against conditions at the NWIPC — calling on the facility to shut down following a string of hunger strikes, suicide attempts and deaths in recent years. The group also warns of overcrowding within the facility.

Shikuma estimated the facility housed about 800 to 900 detainees late last year, but reports show the population has likely grown to at least 1,400 detainees — a 70% increase that approaches the center’s top capacity of 1,575 detainees. 

While La Resistencia serves in a watchdog role over deportation operations, Maru Mora-Villalpando, the group’s co-founder, said that it is not a “service provider.” Instead its goal is to mobilize the community to end all detentions and deportations in Washington state.

“La Resistencia is not a resource,” she said. “La Resistencia is a struggle.”

Legal support

Legal advocates on the east side of the state say they have focused on preventing surprise arrests and building reliable community awareness around enforcement activities. 

Jorge Guerrero, an immigration and environmental justice organizer for Latinos en Spokane, told Cascade PBS that deportation defense can run up to as high as $20,000, and the lawyers willing to take those cases in Washington are sparse. 

So he said LES has looked to enroll workers in Know Your Rights training and build emergency family plans for community members, which he said “is very helpful, especially in the case of a person getting detained and deported, knowing what they want to do, what happens to the children, what happens to their car and what happens to their bank account.”

LES has also partnered with WAISN through its deportation defense hotline to report and verify suspected ICE raids in the area. 

“When someone calls their hotline,” Guerrero said, “they’re calling us.” 

In one example, Guerrero said a community member called the hotline to report ICE outside of their home. “They’re telling us they’re going to bust the door and they are going to take us all,” he recalled.

By the time LES staff headed to the location, ICE was gone — but the callers were able to provide video footage of the interaction for LES to eventually share on social media. Guerrero said they have plans to return to that same neighborhood to do outreach.

“What we’re going to do is make a connection,” he said, “hear them out and show ICE and immigration that the community is not by themselves.”

The group’s Poder Legal team has also continued its monthly legal and immigration clinics, reporting any alleged civil rights violations to the state’s Attorney General’s Office.

Manzanita House in downtown Spokane has also worked to provide immigrants, primarily children or families, with accessible legal aid since 2022. Sam Smith, an immigration attorney and one of the group’s founders, said their attorneys actively represent youth in court, but also try to move them out of court into a long-term relief process. 

Smith noted their services have been at risk with cuts to unaccompanied children’s funding from the federal government — a financial hit of more than $125,000.

The group — whose work has been a mix of pro bono and grant-funded services — has received private donations to counter the cuts, but they continue looking for ways to still meet their community’s needs.

“We’re shifting more to that clinic model,” Smith said, “where we’re not representing those individuals, but going to help them prepare and actually submit their applications to the courts … and not risk having their case tossed out for having an incomplete application or something like that.”

Broader efforts

Many other community organizations — from labor unions to churches to mutual-aid groups — have mobilized in new ways to support immigrants around the state in the months since Trump took office. Following the detention of two Filipina green-card holders in March and April, organizers with the Tanggol Migrante Network, a group representing members of the Filipino diaspora and Filipino migrant workers, rallied outside the Tacoma detention center after launching multiple campaigns to demand their release.

A Migrante organizer outside the facility’s gates, megaphone in hand, said last week that Lewelyn Dixon, one of the women in detention, had had her immigration court hearing moved up in response to public pressure. 

“Regardless of all of the difficulties we endure, … we will also see victories when we are coming together and we continue to fight,” she said. “Thousands of people coming to … solidarity actions, meeting with her, building with her really amazing family — who has been there every step of the way — that we were able to see progress in her legal fight, right? And it’s really the community that helps as the catalyst to keep pushing that forward.”

Shikuma with La Resistencia said their local monitoring work does more than promote accountability. Immigrants navigating unpredictable arrests and detention often feel isolated or abandoned. La Resistencia writes letters to keep in touch with detainees and update their families. Working together to protest, share information and provide support helps empower individuals to protect their communities and build solidarity. 

Keeping watch is just where the work starts. 

“One of our slogans is no estás solo,” he said. “You are not alone.” 

Reporter Jaelynn Grisso contributed to this story.

Correction: This story has been updated to clarify the detention center does not sit on Port of Tacoma-owned property.