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As immigration authorities ramp up arrests to meet President Donald Trump's mass deportation goal, a question has loomed: Where will the government put all the people it detains?
The Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma has in recent months been filling up and, briefly in June, exceeded its 1,575-bed capacity, according to immigrant advocates familiar with the facility's population.
So Immigration and Customs Enforcement sent large groups of immigrants detained in Tacoma to other places — including Alaska.
The transfer of immigrants to the men-only Anchorage Correctional Complex, housing pretrial criminal defendants as well as some people who have been convicted, prompted criticism from immigrant advocates. They said conditions at the correctional complex were worse than at the Tacoma ICE facility, which itself has received longstanding complaints.
Alaska's House Judiciary Committee held a hearing last week in which Democratic lawmakers grilled the state's Department of Corrections Commissioner Jen Winkelman on the treatment of immigrant arrivals.
For them, being sent to Alaska — a remote, cold and dark place in the popular imagination — may have been especially frightening, said Anchorage immigration attorney Nicolas Olano. It's almost like the government is trying to psychologically wear them out," he said.
Seven Democratic members of Congress, including Washington Reps. Pramila Jayapal, Emily Randall and Adam Smith, weighed in Friday with a letter to federal officials saying immigrants were "moved thousands of miles away from their families, communities, and legal representatives to a prison with a deeply problematic history." A class-action lawsuit filed last month accuses Alaska's correctional system of dangerously inadequate health care.
As of last week's hearing, 35 immigrants sent from Tacoma remained in Alaska, held together in one unit, according to Winkelman, who said her staff had risen to the challenge of accommodating them. The correctional complex has held detained immigrants before due to a contract with the federal government, but not in such large numbers, she said.
An ICE spokesperson did not respond to questions about the transfers.
ICE first reached out to Alaska's Corrections Department about transferring people on June 4, Winkelman said at the hearing, recounting how an officer from the federal agency said something like, "we need space for up to 30 days." ICE asked how many people the department could accommodate.
The department said it could take 59 immigrants but in the end received 41 on June 8, Winkelman said.
They appeared to have been flown there by a Coast Guard plane, judging by a post on X by the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Anchorage office. The post, with pictures of the plane and immigrants in waist and ankle shackles being shuttled onto a bus, said the FBI was supporting immigration enforcement with "this recent transport operation."
ICE also transferred more than 100 people from the Tacoma facility to immigrant detention centers in California and Hawaii, according to hearing testimony and Elizabeth Benki, a lawyer with the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project.
Some people didn't know where they were going, Benki said. "It's not clear if they're being transferred to a different immigration facility … if they're being deported to their home country or a third country."
"And it's very fast," Benki said. People had less than a day's notice and their lawyers were not informed, she said. A client of the immigrant rights project sent to a California immigrant detention center, who had no criminal record, was kept in handcuffs and ankle shackles for the duration of the flight, according to Benki.
At the Alaska facility, many immigrants had trouble accessing their personal belongings, including legal paperwork, said Cindy Woods, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska. "So unless they had their attorney's phone number memorized, they weren't able to try to call their attorney."
Woods said she didn't know why they couldn't access their belongings or whether some things were left in Tacoma. Alaska's Corrections Department did not immediately respond to questions about that and other matters related to conditions at the Anchorage facility.
One man's frustration with the inability to access his belongings led to corrections staff pepper spraying the area where immigrants are held, according to Woods and Albert Khamitov, one of the men transferred from Tacoma to Alaska. Winkelman did not confirm what initially sparked the incident but said staff had issued a lockdown order that was met with resistance.
"They were left kind of in that same space with no ventilation, with the pepper spray still in the air, for days," Woods said.
"We cannot breathe," Khamitov recalled during a video call this week from the Tacoma detention center. ICE returned the Russian immigrant there after 10 days in Alaska. During that time, Olano, the Anchorage attorney, met him and joined a Seattle lawyer in taking up his case, filing a lawsuit on Khamitov's behalf.
An immigration judge had granted Khamitov asylum in September but he was kept in detention because of a government appeal. The Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed the appeal Thursday. He was released Friday.
During more than a year of detention, Khamitov spent time in ICE facilities in three states. Immigrant detention centers are often compared to jails. The Tacoma detention center, dealing with staffing shortages, has sometimes struggled to keep up with its ballooning population. Those held there have gotten dinner as late as midnight, according to immigrants and advocates.
Still, Khamitov said none of the ICE facilities he experienced had as harsh conditions as the Anchorage Correctional Compex. "It was a very bad place," he said.
Khamitov said he could infrequently change his uniform, was kept for more than a day in his cell without access to outdoor space and had to use toilets that could flush only twice an hour.
In the beginning, Alaska attorneys who heard about the transfers and wanted to meet with immigrants were told by correctional staff that ICE had to give its approval. When informed by a lawmaker at the hearing that ICE vetting of attorneys violated federal standards for treatment of detained immigrants, Winkelman said the requirement had since been waived and implied there had been a misunderstanding. "It was a little bumpy at first," she said.
One question that remains: Does the Anchorage Correctional Complex have adequate space for the immigrants it has taken in? Some have been sleeping three to a cell that has only two beds, with one person sleeping on a mattress on the floor.
"There is enough room for them to be two to an individual cell, Winkelman said at the hearing. People sleeping three to a cell have been asked if they want to move and have chosen not to, she said, adding that staff have found people with similar backgrounds and culture prefer to stay together.
In contrast, Woods of the ACLU, also testifying at the hearing, said she has heard many complaints about overcrowded cells.
Another open question is how long the immigrants from Tacoma will stay in Alaska. Winkelman said she doesn't know what will happen when 30 days is up, and is awaiting further information from ICE.
With the Trump administration pushing the agency to increase its arrests to 3,000 a day nationwide, it's hard to see the Tacoma detention center freeing up much space without transferring immigrants elsewhere.
Local jails and prisons are not a possibility due to the Keep Washington Working Act, which prohibits most forms of local cooperation with immigration enforcement.
ICE has made an agreement with the federal Bureau of Prisons that allows for the placement of detained immigrants in eight of its facilities, according to a bureau spokesperson. None are in Washington. Asked if the SeaTac Federal Detention Center could serve in that capacity, as it did for a time during the first Trump administration, the spokesperson said the bureau had no further comment.
The federal government has also talked about detaining immigrants on military bases. A Joint Base Lewis-McChord spokesperson said he knew of no plans to use the Pierce County military installation in that way.
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