University of Washington Center for Human Rights

Seven suspected tuberculosis cases at Tacoma ICE processing facility The KING 5 Investigators discovered seven suspected cases of TB at the Northwest ICE Processing Center, confirmed by the Washington State Department of Health.

"These are the kinds of stories that should sound alarm bells in the heads of all people concerned about human rights in this state," said Angelina Godoy, director of the University of Washington's Center for Human Rights.

www.king5.com/article/news...

El Salvador: Amnesty International declares Ruth Eleonora López, Alejandro Henríquez and José Ángel Pérez prisoners of conscience amid increasing repression Amnesty International names lawyer Ruth López, environmental defender Alejandro Henríquez and pastor and community leader José Ángel Pérez as prisoners of conscience.

This groundbreaking verdict comes in the midst of new and urgent concerns about violations of human rights in El Salvador, including widespread acts of repression against human rights defenders, such as Ruth López of @cristosal.bsky.social.

www.amnesty.org/en/latest/pr...

Black and white photo of four Dutch journalists who were killed in El Salvador in 1982. An overlay of and excerpt from an old ype-written document reads "4. As a result of their investigation, reporting officers concluded that the journalists died of multiple gunshot wounds received during an encounter with soldiers of the atonal battalion while attempting to enter guerrilla territory surreptitiously in the company of guides identified by Salvadoran armed forces as guerrillas. Circumstantial evidence raises possibility that the journalists and guerrillas died in an ambush rather than a chance encounter."

ICYMI: This month, a court in El Salvador announced a monumental verdict on the 1982 deaths of four Dutch journalists.

Drawing on 15 years of engagement w/ historical documents, UWCHR is proud to share excerpts from our testimony used as evidence.

Read more:
unfinishedsentences.org/reports/kill...

Under Trump’s ICE, people without criminal history increasingly targeted in WA On the social media pages for the Seattle Field Office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, scrolling lists of mug shots highlight people with criminal convictions. But these posts don’t reflect a ...

“Every one of these records relates to the life of a human being,” said Phil Neff, a researcher at the University of Washington’s Center for Human Rights.

Last week's @kuow.org segment explores immigration arrest trends in WA state: www.kuow.org/stories/unde...

FYI: If you are a UW student, staff, or faculty member, you can access this article via UW libraries.

guides.lib.uw.edu/research/bus...

An excellent deep dive on immigration detention in this week's visual investigation from the @financialtimes.com ft. data from the Deportation Data Project, analyzed by UWCHR.

ig.ft.com/us-immigrati...

bsky.app/profile/uwch...

UW study: ICE hasn’t sanctioned WA facility over documented abuses The company operating the Northwest ICE Processing Center has never been sanctioned by the federal government for breaching its contract, a UW report found.

“What’s the point of having a contract that includes language you don’t intend to uphold?"

Today's Seattle Times article by @ayoonhendricks.bsky.social covers our newest report, "Compliance Theater: The NWDC's Unenforced Contract"

www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

“Given that the contract is set to expire in September 2025, it is important to understand how and why the contract enforcement process is failing to ensure that facility conditions comply with basic standards. ICE’s claims that required documents “do not exist” related to incidents we know for a fact happened begs the question: Is ICE taking any action at all to enforce the contract with GEO?” - Angelina Godoy, UWCHR director

As UWCHR Director Angelina Godoy puts it, "ICE’s claims that required documents 'do not exist' related to incidents we know for a fact happened begs the question: Is ICE taking any action at all to enforce the contract with GEO?”

Read the full report here: www.tinyurl.com/NWDCcontract

Findings: Unenforced contract If GEO fails to comply with the terms of the contract, ICE can impose financial penalties. But has ICE ever imposed financial penalties? This 2019 report* cites GEO’s failing to meet required cleanliness standards and explains that 20% of GEO’s monthly payment could be withheld. Despite documented failures to uphold contract standards, GEO Group has never, according to the documents released, been sanctioned by ICE under the terms of the contract. *ICE responded in 2023 to a FOIA request saying Contract Discrepancy Reports (CDR) don’t exist, however UWCHR received this CDR in 2022 after suing ICE for FOIA violations. Read the full report for more details.

Additionally, despite documented failures to uphold contract standards, GEO Group has never, according to the documents released, been sanctioned by ICE under the terms of the contract.

Findings: Missing required documents ICE told UWCHR, in response to FOIA requests, that they had no records of any Monthly Status Reports, Monthly Injury Reports, Use of Force Incident Reports, Sexual Abuse Incident Reviews and Annual Sexual Abuse Reviews, Contract Discrepancy Reports despite these docs being required under contract. Slide shows screenshots of FOIA response letters saying “no records responsive to your request were found.”

ICE told UWCHR that they had no records of the following documents, despite these documents being required under contract:

Monthly Status Reports, Monthly Injury Reports, Use of Force Incident Reports, Sexual Abuse Incident Reviews, Annual Sexual Abuse Reviews, and Contract Discrepancy Reports.

Findings: The contract between ICE and GEO for operation of the NWDC expires in Sept 2025. It is likely to be renewed. When criticized for detention conditions, ICE regularly cites the high standards required under the contract. However, despite documented failures to uphold contract standards, ICE has never taken corrective action to sanction GEO Group under the terms of the contract. UWCHR has filed multiple FOIA requests for various categories of records mandated under the facility’s contract, but in many cases ICE has responded that the required records do not exist. Members of Congress have also been unable to obtain records required under the contract.

This report examines ICE’s use of enforcement mechanisms in its $700 million contract with GEO Group, Inc., the private company that runs the detention center.

How does ICE enforce the contract and what happens if GEO fails to meet contract standards?

Here’s what we found:

New Report: Compliance Theater: The NWDC's Unenforced Contract www.tinyurl.com/NWDCcontract

New report!!

"Compliance Theater: The NWDC's Unenforced Contract" is the next installment in our series looking at conditions at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, WA.

Read the full report here:
www.tinyurl.com/NWDCcontract

UWCHR's Angelina Godoy offered some context for how flights work and which companies are involved.

"Signature [the company servicing the flights], with an office next door to the main terminal, is 'profiting from this business,' Godoy said ... 'King County makes money from Signature’s rent.'"

Deportation flights at WA airport up dramatically this year, advocates say • Washington State Standard More migrants were flown out of Boeing Field in the first six months this year than all of 2024 as the president has ramped up deportations.

Yesterday, @laresistencianw.bsky.social shared updates on their work monitoring deportation flights out of the King County Airport, citing trends in observations and flight patterns, airport transparency issues, and flight information obstruction.

washingtonstatestandard.com/2025/07/15/d...

Abuses in the Air report cover promo graphic: grayscale images of dollar signs link to basketballs, soccer balls, handcuffs, and airplanes.

Read our full "Abuses in the Air: Sports Travel and the Deportation Industry" report here:
jsis.washington.edu/humanrights/...

Charter airline used by women’s basketball linked to ICE deportation flights When women’s basketball traveled to Chapel Hill, North Carolina on March 18 for its second-ever March Madness appearance, the team and staff boarded a chartered flight operated by Global Crossing Airl...

In 2022 we published findings that sports teams were using the same private charter air travel companies that ICE was using for deportation flights, often flying teams in the same planes only days apart from flying deportation flights.

It still happens.

www.columbiaspectator.com/sports/2025/...

UW students are unable to contact people they were in touch with at NWDC once they were transferred to the Alaska facility.

UWCHR Director Angelina Godoy reflects, "Given that he is in Alaska now, and his attorneys are not, this interrupts his right to counsel. These are really worrying facts.”

ICE detainees at Anchorage jail face communication barriers and harsh conditions, advocates say The Department of Corrections says they’re being held under the same conditions as any other inmate in Alaska.

ICE transfers of people from other states into Alaska's jail system leaves people far from family and legal representation.

@adn.com reports on conditions at the Alaska facility, incl. the experiences of those transferred from WA's NWDC, citing UWCHR research.

www.adn.com/alaska-news/...

How Data Scraping Provides Insights into Immigrant Arrests During the Trump administration (2017-2021), the Washington State detention and deportation pipeline for immigrants seemed to be getting more problematic. Washington has laws that prohibit local law e...

The state of Washington has laws that are supposed to prevent local law enforcement from sharing data with ICE.

HRDAG supported
@uwchr.bsky.social
in analyzing a massive ICE data trove to understand if Washington's law was working.

hrdag.org/2021/08/15/u...

Abuses in the Air: Sports Travel and the Deportation Industry Report Cover. Red lines connect grayscale basketballs and soccer balls to shackles and money signs.

Learn more about UWCHR's 2022 "Abuses in the Air: Sports Travel and the Deportation Industry" report.

jsis.washington.edu/humanrights/...

“You have the low-end flights for people, which are basically shackled in the sky and then you have the other end, the very high-end flights, w/ these corporate logos and everything on the plane and the athletes in there looking great … and it’s the same damn (plane).”
-UWCHR Director Angelina Godoy

ICE’s go-to charter airline for deportations also flew NCAA teams, Inter Miami and more From March through May of this year, GlobalX operated an estimated 62 percent of deportation flights.

Great overview of GlobalX's business of doing both high-end sports travel, alongside ICE Air deportation flights.

From today's @nytimes.com, citing UWCHR research:
www.nytimes.com/athletic/641...

Learn more about the collaboration between MPOP and UWCHR through the Strategies for Massage Parlor Workers' Rights project:
jsis.washington.edu/humanrights/...

“The work that we’re doing builds on the legacy of the neighborhood,” said Yin, another volunteer. “A bunch of volunteers just showing up to keep each other safe and providing basic needs for a neighborhood. And then, all at the same time, building community with folks.”

Responding to violence against massage workers, Massage Parlor Outreach Project launches Midnight Supper Club in the Chinatown-ID - International Examiner Seattle’s Massage Parlor Outreach Project (MPOP) launched a new initiative in December 2024: the Midnight Supper Club. Every three or four weeks, MPOP volunteers take to the streets to check on massag...

Hear updates from the Massage Parlor Outreach Project in yesterday's International Examiner article covering MPOP's newest project, Midnight Supper Club, including citing research done in collaboration with UWCHR.

iexaminer.org/responding-t...

In incredible news, yesterday a judge in El Salvador rendered a historic ruling, convicting three high-ranking military officers of the 1982 murder of four Dutch journalists, and ordered President Bukele to publicly apologize to the Salvadoran victims’ movement for denying justice for 43 years.

Updates on conditions at the Northwest Detention Center from partner org @laresistencianw.bsky.social

The Roots of Bukele’s Gulag | John Washington The Terrorism Confinement Center was designed to be a black hole. When Nayib Bukele’s flagship “megaprison”—known as CECOT, after its Spanish

Great article by @jwashing.bsky.social on links b/t US & El Salvador, offering historical context to current developments in immigration & incarceration.

"By selling space in CECOT to the US, Bukele has in effect brought this long history of violence full circle."

www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...

Learn more about our ICE Air research:
jsis.washington.edu/humanrights/...