On March 31, 2003, still in the wake of September 11th , the Department of Homeland Security absorbed the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and assigned the agency’s apprehension, detention and deportation responsibilities to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)  .  By April 7, 2004, ICE, with its Office of Detention and Removal (DRO)  managing, opened its newest immigration prison, a $115 million facility named the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) in Tacoma.

NWDC is a for-profit prison, a contract facility actually owned operated by the GEO Group Inc,   a multinational corrections corporation that contracts with the DRO to run the day-in day-out operations.  NWDC is located at 1623 East J Street in an industrial area not far from the Tacoma Dome.

Originally designed for between 700 and 870 inmates, the capacity had expanded to 1061 detainees by 2007, in part of a national enforcement strategy dedicated to “removing all removable aliens by 2012.”

Although daily operations have been outsourced to GEO, the DRO still transports aliens and manages the detainees while they are in custody awaiting their cases to be processed.  The DRO calls the inmates detainees--not prisoners--even though the detainees are kept behind locked doors with armed guards.  Not all detainees are charged with crimes.  Many are economic refugees, commonly referred to as illegal aliens, who have simply entered the United States without inspection.

In the realm of detention and deportation, when illegal  and criminally-convicted aliens are picked up by ICE or DRO agents, they enter a distinct world of sub-constitutional justice under a separate system of administrative procedural law.  For example, detainee arrests are not necessarily public knowledge.   The court files are not public.  There is no public record of who is in the detention centers in the United States as required with citizens in prisons and jails.  When noncitizens appear in immigration court to try to remain in the country, the burden is on them to prove they are in the country legally and deserve to stay.  Moreover, the government is not required to provide them with a lawyer.  Troubling is the fact that most people who appear in immigration hearings have no resources for attorneys.

Arguably, their cases are essentially lost before they appear in court.  Expulsions for noncitizens with prior criminal convictions have been predetermined by the sweeping “aggravated felony” and “crimes of moral turpitude” statutes under 1996 immigration law.  The majority of the deportees in the NWDC--those who only entered the country without authorization--came only to work and got caught.  For them, the forgone finale to their detention is removal from the United States. 
Who and what is in the facility?

Of the 1061 beds, the average daily population totals 985, with approximately 890 men and 95 women.  Most have been apprehended in the states of Washington, Oregon, and Alaska.  Detainees represent approximately 60 countries or more; with the most representation from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, The Philippines, Honduras, China, and Vietnam.  The duration of detention at NWDC for undocumented aliens and post-sentence criminal aliens ranges between 2–3 days up to 2-4 years.  The average incarceration at NWDC lasts 33 days.  In the fiscal year ending 2007, the NWDC booked-in 9,441 detainees and booked-out 9,258.

The vast majority of book-outs are deported from the US.  However, a few are released on bond pending deportation and a few more are released on Order of Supervision (OS).  There are approximately 600 noncitizens released under OS in the state of Washington.  There are good reasons for this.  OS status is granted to deportees that cannot be removed from the US due to international conditions or absent repatriation agreements.  Many countries are too simply too dangerous to send anyone.  Some countries that will not receive deportees from the US are Vietnam, Somalia, and Cuba.  In spite of their temporary reprieves, OS releases remain subject to removal at anytime pending changes in international conditions.

All deportation hearings at NWDC are conducted in the adjacent Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR) courtrooms.  The EOIR is an administrative court within the Department of Justice (DOJ).  The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) has the final say on who can enter or stay in the US.  The EOIR interprets and administers federal immigration law by conducting immigration court proceedings, appellate reviews, and administrative hearings.  The EOIR consists of the Office of Chief Immigration Judge, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and the Office of Chief Administrative Hearing Officer.  The EOIR adjudicates immigration cases involving detained aliens, criminal aliens, and aliens seeking asylum as a form of relief from removal.

A division of the DOJ, the EOIR operates within a system of administrative law independently of the immigration enforcement functions ICE and the DRO.
Administrative law is procedural law administered by the executive branch of government.  Deportations are executed by administrative agents called Immigration Judges.  Some immigration law scholars complain that they are not trained as real judges, but rather, they are akin to bureaucrats in robes.  Others complain that pre-deportation detentions as well as deportation hearings extend a lesser standard of due process protections to noncitizens.

It is important that citizens insist on the extension full constitutional protections to all persons, during all forms of legal adjudication.  The standard of social justice that citizens accord noncitizens may be the same standard that citizens could someday be subjected to.  One way to ensure that equal due process protections are accorded during deportation proceedings is to closely monitor the semi-secretive EOIR courts.  Under normal conditions, an immigration judge will admit courtroom observers unless the case in question is deemed to be a matter sensitive to national security.

A local immigration law group is monitoring local EOIR court hearings to ensure that immigration judges treat noncitizens fairly.  The Northwest Detention Court Watch Project, sponsored by the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, is looking for law school students and/or local community activists to participate in a monitoring project as court watch volunteers.  Volunteers are needed to observe court proceedings in both the immigration court located in Tacoma’s own NWDC.  A three hour training session to be held on Saturday January 12th, 2008 on the UW Tacoma campus can be accessed by emailing cricri@u.washington.edu.