This report is part of a series regarding Human Rights Conditions at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington, based on ongoing research efforts and released to highlight initial findings in the urgent context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Contents: • Introduction • Background, Methodology, and Human Rights Standards • Sanitation of Food and Laundry •

Summary Flock Safety automated license plate reader (ALPR) networks have become increasingly common in Washington state. Records obtained by UWCHR researchers via public records requests reveal that at least eight Washington state law enforcement agencies enabled direct, 1:1 sharing of their networks with U.S. Border Patrol at some point during 2025; effectively opening the “front

On August 21, 2025, UWCHR released our latest report, “Gross Human Rights Violations in Washington State: Enforced Disappearance and Refoulement,” tracing the connections between Washington state institutions and grave human rights violations against Washingtonian migrants by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). We found evidence of greater local involvement

Executive summary This report reviews local involvement in gross human rights abuses against immigrants, focusing on forced disappearance and refoulement. Its findings reveal that the connections between Washington state and these crimes are broader and deeper than has been previously known. They are broader because there are many more cases of Washingtonians being subjected to

This report is part of a series regarding Human Rights Conditions at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington, based on ongoing research efforts and released to highlight initial findings in the urgent context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Contents: • Introduction • Background, Methodology, and Human Rights Standards • Sanitation of Food and Laundry •

Since 2017, as part of a longstanding effort to examine the human rights implications of federal immigration enforcement, the Center for Human Rights has sought to obtain information about conditions of immigrant detention in Washington state.  Our findings are published in an ongoing series of reports, Conditions at the Northwest Detention Center, with the newest

This report is part of a series regarding Human Rights Conditions at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington, based on ongoing research efforts and released to highlight initial findings in the urgent context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Contents: • Introduction • Background, Methodology, and Human Rights Standards • Sanitation of Food and Laundry •

Since the Trump administration’s recent pivot to using military planes in addition to private charter flights to conduct deportation flights, UWCHR researchers have found that between the start of the flights on January 24, 2025, to February 13, 2025, most military deportation flights were by planes stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM) in WA state.

Center’s seventh FOIA lawsuit would compel proactive release of three key types of documents on a quarterly basis On November 13, 2024, the University of Washington Center for Human Rights (UWCHR) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), seeking to require

In 2024 we continued to monitor conditions at the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) in Tacoma, documenting emergent crises affecting people detained at the NWDC, including the death of Charles Leo Daniel and a series of suicide attempts at the facility during the first quarter of the year. In both cases, these crises were first reported