{"id":7754,"date":"2023-10-18T12:28:17","date_gmt":"2023-10-18T19:28:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/humanrights\/?p=7754"},"modified":"2025-08-04T10:25:28","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T17:25:28","slug":"use-of-force-and-chemical-agents-at-the-nwdc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/humanrights\/2023\/10\/18\/use-of-force-and-chemical-agents-at-the-nwdc\/","title":{"rendered":"Use of Force and Chemical Agents at the NWDC"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The below text is featured in the <a href=\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/humanrights\/2023\/10\/03\/uw-center-for-human-rights-annual-report-2022-2023\/\">UWCHR 2022-2023 Annual Report.<\/a><br \/>\nWritten by Angelina Godoy<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">In 2023, conditions at the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) came once again under scrutiny as those detained in the facility staged a series of hunger strikes to protest conditions, while legislators passed a bill mandating increased state oversight of all private detention facilities in Washington, including the NWDC. In this context, confirmed reports of the deployment of chemical agents against hunger strikers in the facility in February 2023 raised concerns about the use of force. At the request of community partners, the UW Center for Human Rights conducted an analysis of the human rights implications of the use of force at the Northwest Detention Center and <a href=\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/humanrights\/2023\/08\/14\/conditions-at-the-nwdc-uses-of-force-and-chemical-agents\/\">published a report on this topic<\/a>, the eighth in our <a href=\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/humanrights\/projects\/human-rights-at-home\/conditions-at-the-northwest-detention-center\/\">series regarding human rights conditions at ICE\u2019s Northwest Detention Center. <\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">UWCHR researchers drew on ICE documents, including Significant Incident Reports, Disciplinary Detention Reviews, Records of Deportable\/Inadmissible Aliens, and others, to construct a record of 70 use of force incidents at the Northwest Detention Center during a period of seven years and five months between 2015 and 2023. The incidents themselves ranged in nature from the spontaneous use of physical force to break up fights, to the deployment of chemical agents to obligate detained people to \u201cfollow officer orders,\u201d to the force-feeding of a hunger striker. Use of force is particularly likely to occur during \u201ccell extractions,\u201d or the forced moving of a resistant person from one cell to another; this occurs most frequently in the Restricted Housing Unit. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Because UWCHR\u2019s access to information about specific incidents was limited, the report did not focus on inquiring as to the legitimacy of individual instances of use of force, instead examining the overall pattern and its human rights implications. Researchers identified three major areas of concern: the use of force against people with mental illness; the use of force against people engaged in nonviolent protests or hunger strikes; and the facility\u2019s failure to follow its own rules, rendering untreated mental illness and protests\/hunger strikes more likely, and thus increasing the propensity for further use of force through escalating cycles of conflict and cruelty. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The use of force against individuals with mental illness who failed to follow orders is particularly troubling given the fact that such individuals may be unable to follow guards\u2019 orders due to their illness rather than as acts of willful disruption. Tragically, in many cases individuals with mental health challenges were subjected to escalating attacks over time, in a pattern that suggests a deterioration of the individual\u2019s mental health, likely fueling, and being fueled by, the cycle of cruelty they experienced. For example, one detained man experienced thirteen instances of use of force between June and August 2019, six of which involved the use of chemical agents. In one such incident, ICE reports indicate that he was sprayed with chemical agents and left on his solitary cell floor in restraints, from where he screamed, \u201cI am insane.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The internal documents reviewed also show that both physical and chemical means of force were deployed against those speaking out about conditions in detention, including those resorting to constitutionally protected free speech actions like hunger strikes. ICE internal documents routinely characterize hunger strikers as \u201cfacility security threats,\u201d a designation that is then used to justify the use of force against them and their placement in solitary confinement. This is, indeed, permissible under ICE\u2019s published standards, which do not distinguish between threats of interpersonal violence and the \u201cthreats\u201d posed by those engaged in hunger strikes. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Lastly, the records reviewed reveal that ICE\u2019s and GEO\u2019s system of internal monitoring and oversight\u2014its detainee grievance system, its reporting of instances of use of force up the chain for agency review, its facility inspections and its contract enforcement tools\u2014does not work to detect and remediate abuses that occur. With so little reason to believe these mechanisms offer any meaningful protection, those detained are more likely to experience despondency and other mental health challenges, and more likely to engage in protests. Yet both of these developments too often simply trigger additional use of force. By incarcerating people in conditions of extreme deprivation, providing poor access to health care, especially for those with mental illness, and offering no meaningful mechanism by which individuals can contest ill-treatment when it happens, the NWDC creates the circumstances under which the use of violence and chemical weapons has become a regular part of facility operations.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/humanrights\/2023\/08\/14\/conditions-at-the-nwdc-uses-of-force-and-chemical-agents\/\"><b>Read the full \u201cCycles of Cruelty\u201d report here.<\/b><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The below text is featured in the UWCHR 2022-2023 Annual Report. Written by Angelina Godoy In 2023, conditions at the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) came once again under scrutiny as those detained in the facility staged a series of hunger strikes to protest conditions, while legislators passed a bill mandating increased state oversight of all<\/p>\n<div><a class=\"more\" href=\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/humanrights\/2023\/10\/18\/use-of-force-and-chemical-agents-at-the-nwdc\/\">Read more<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":675,"featured_media":7731,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[428,341,13,362,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2022-2023","category-nwdc-conditions","category-human-rights-at-home","category-immigrant-rights-observatory","category-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Use of Force and Chemical Agents at the NWDC - Center for Human Rights<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/humanrights\/2023\/10\/18\/use-of-force-and-chemical-agents-at-the-nwdc\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Use of Force and Chemical Agents at the NWDC - Center for Human Rights\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The below text is featured in the UWCHR 2022-2023 Annual Report. Written by Angelina Godoy In 2023, conditions at the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) came once again under scrutiny as those detained in the facility staged a series of hunger strikes to protest conditions, while legislators passed a bill mandating increased state oversight of all\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/humanrights\/2023\/10\/18\/use-of-force-and-chemical-agents-at-the-nwdc\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Center for Human Rights\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/uwchr\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-10-18T19:28:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-08-04T17:25:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/humanrights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/22\/2023\/10\/NWDC-Conditions-Report-Graphics-1-750x422.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1920\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1080\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Andrea Marcos\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@uwchr\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@uwchr\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Andrea Marcos\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/humanrights\/2023\/10\/18\/use-of-force-and-chemical-agents-at-the-nwdc\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/humanrights\/2023\/10\/18\/use-of-force-and-chemical-agents-at-the-nwdc\/\",\"name\":\"Use of Force and Chemical Agents at the NWDC - 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