Taken by ICE 

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There is a 12-foot chain-link fence separating the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma from the world outside. But you barely notice the fence. The facility, which opened in 2004 and is operated by the for-profit GEO Group, blends naturally into its surroundings: drab and gray and low-slung. Just another warehouse in an area full of them, tucked behind the Port of Tacoma. 

This is a quiet and lonesome stretch. Family members idle in their cars, waiting for visiting hours. White vans silently ferry detainees in and out of the facility. The sound of trains and nearby industrial work lingers in the background. 

Among the many silent forms of protest that have taken form outside the fence—posters, altars, the occasional bouquet—a laminated sheet of paper affixed to a signpost offers a QR code linking to a GoFundMe page and the words in Spanish: 

“Tomada por ICE. Apoya la batalla legal de Yeison y reúnase con su familia.” 

Taken by ICE. Support Yeison’s legal battle and reunite him with his family. 

At the top of the page there’s a photo of a man hugging a young girl. 

Crystal-Lee Miller hung that poster earlier this year on one of her regular trips from Kennewick to visit her husband, Yeison Aguirre, in detention. 

Miller would typically make the four-hour drive every other week. She would arrive in time for afternoon visiting hours, spend the night in her car a few miles away, and wake to visit him again in the morning before returning home. Sometimes she would stay two or three nights, eating sandwiches she brought from home to save money. 

They met around Christmas in 2022 at a neighborhood bar in Kennewick, shortly after Aguirre landed in the United States from Colombia; they were married less than a year later, despite his not speaking much English and her not speaking much Spanish. 

“We’ve got some awesome Spanglish going on,” says Miller. 

It was a simple life. They cooked together and cared for Miller’s granddaughter Aleeyah, who lived with them (“Mi amor,” Aguirre calls her). Every night he would chat via video with his son back in Colombia, who is 8 now. On weekends, he played rec soccer. They spent time with Aguirre’s sister and her family, who lived nearby and brought him to Tri-Cities in the first place. And they did their best to prepare for his asylum hearing, which had been scheduled for 2028. 

“I’m putting everything I’ve got into trying to figure this paperwork out,” says Miller. “They accept it. We’re like, ‘OK, we felt semi-safe.’ And then, you know, we had new administration changes, and rules changed.” 

Since the start of the second Trump administration in January, the number of people detained by ICE across the country has approximately tripled, from 15,000 to 45,000. Less than 30 percent of those detainees have a criminal conviction. In January, there were about 700 people detained at NWIPC. Now the population is hovering near the facility’s contractual capacity of 1,575. 

“We have seen a lot more people who were arrested here in this area, but we are still seeing people who have been transferred from other facilities, especially in the South where much higher numbers of people are being detained, especially along the border and in Southern cities,” says Aiden Perkinson, operations manager for the nonprofit Advocates for Immigrants in Detention Northwest.

Perkinson and his team of volunteers operate a number of programs in and around the detention center: stocking the library, showing up during visiting hours, filling up phone cards so that detainees can contact their families. But the heart of their work happens weekday afternoons in tents they have set up outside the chain-link fence and in an RV they keep nearby, where they assist detainees as they are released. 

There is often no rhyme or reason to when a detainee might be released. The facility is not like a jail or prison where inmates are serving fixed sentences; some stay days, some years. Many are never given a good sense of where they have been taken, either, and the government has no legal mandate to return people to where they were detained. 

“We keep a map here with a little star on Tacoma because many people have no idea where they actually are,” says Perkinson.

Aguirre and Miller were shopping at Walmart on a June afternoon when ICE called, asking Aguirre to come in the next morning and verify his identification. Miller was terrified. Normally Aguirre’s check-ins were with not with ICE but US Citizenship and Immigration Services. It had only been a phone call, not a legal summons, but Aguirre wanted to go. “It will be fine,” he told her. 

Back in Colombia, Aguirre had worked as a carpenter building high-end advertising displays. He also volunteered as a youth counselor in his home city of Buenaventura. This made him a target in a region of the country that has been ravaged by paramilitary violence directed specifically at social leaders like him. 

He survived a kidnapping attempt that left a scar on his face and later an attack on his mother’s house. He moved frequently, ultimately landing in the capital, Bogotá, but the scar and his milky left blue eye from a childhood accident made him easily recognizable, and he was advised by Colombian authorities to flee the country—leaving his son and most of the rest of his family behind. When Aguirre landed in the United States in 2022, he turned himself over to Customs and Border Patrol at the airport and began the process of seeking asylum. Less than a month later, he met Miller. 

When they showed up at the ICE office in Richland, they were greeted by a kind receptionist who guided Aguirre behind a closed door. Maybe, thought Miller, I’m overreacting. Five minutes later, an officer emerged fully decked out in tactical gear to let Miller know that her husband was being detained. 

She held it together. She promised to not make a scene. She is grateful the officer at least let her come say goodbye.  

Since it started counting in 2019, AIDNW estimates it has helped somewhere between 6,000 and 8,000 detainees. But one of the ironic challenges it faces right now is that much of the work it does at the welcome center requires ICE to actually release people. You can’t welcome folks who are still inside those gray walls, can’t give them rides to the airport or new clothes or gift cards for meals. 

The facility itself is something of a mystery to outsiders: Owned by the federal government, operated by the largest private prison company in the United States, it exists beyond the authority of local regulatory agencies. And the federal regulatory bodies that do have access have been neutered by the Trump administration. 

In 2023, Washington state passed a law that would mandate certain conditions inside and allow its agencies access for inspections. But the implementation of that law is currently held up in court. Meanwhile, detainees are dealing with substandard food and insufficient medical care.

Aguirre says he has experienced both. He was served a large piece of glass in his food during one meal. And soon after he arrived in June, he injured his foot playing soccer in the yard. An X-ray revealed that it was broken, but in the months afterward, he received no follow-up treatment as it remained swollen: just a bandage, a boot, and a set of crutches. 

“There’s a big old mountain shape where you can see the bone poking, pushing up against the skin,” says Miller. “He asked to see a doctor, asked to see a doctor. ‘Oh sorry, there’s no doctor available, there’s no doctor available.’”

Aguirre had been found at fault for a misdemeanor single-car accident the year before. But it turned out this was not the reason for his detention. Rather, it had to do with his asylum case, says Miller. 

An immigration court judge in Tacoma set Aguirre up with a new asylum hearing, but their attorney no-showed the initial court date, and they didn’t have money for a new lawyer. (There are no government-appointed attorneys in immigration court.) The judge advised them to take a different path: Asylum would likely be granted only if Aguirre was fleeing from the threat of government violence, not paramilitary or narco violence, which was what he faced. And if he lost his asylum hearing, he would face a 10-year ban on reentering the United States. 

The other path would be for Aguirre to voluntarily self-deport and pursue legal resident status through his marriage to Miller. The couple had begun that process immediately after their wedding in December 2023 by filing an I-130 form and uploading evidence of their relationship regularly to a government portal: lease paperwork, bills, family photos. But there was no indication that their application would be approved anytime soon.  

On a recent afternoon, a detainee hobbled out from behind the chain-link fence on crutches and made his way over to the AIDNW tents. “I wouldn’t wish it on anybody, not even my own worst enemy,” he said in Spanish. But it wasn’t Aguirre. 

This detainee had been arrested in Portland during what he thought would be a routine check-in and released following a successful appeal by his attorney. The ankle shackles used when he was detained had reaggravated an old injury—hence the crutches.

He sat under a tent and drank a Sprite, and then a Coke. He transferred his belongings from the clear garbage bag he had been given into a backpack provided by an AIDNW volunteer (he declined the offer of new clothes). On his wrist, he wore an identification bracelet he had been given inside. As he waited for his wife to make the drive up from Portland with their baby daughter, white vans marked with the words GEO Group continued to pass in and out of the parking lot. One of them would soon hold Yeison Aguirre.

After debating the risk of an asylum hearing, Aguirre elected to self-deport and accept a flight back to Colombia from ICE. “I’m scared to go back to Colombia,” Aguirre said. But at the very least, he would get to see his son.

His hope—and Miller’s—was that with help from US Sen. Maria Cantwell’s office their I-130 would be processed quickly and Aguirre would either be released from custody before he was officially deported or be able return to the United States quickly, and bring his son.

In early October, Miller learned that Aguirre had been flown to a facility in Arizona, then to Louisiana. Each destination farther from their life in Kennewick. On a phone call from the ICE Processing Center in Louisiana, Aguirre said he understood that his situation was a political one, not a reflection of the country that has detained him. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the people.”

Neither he nor Miller knew when exactly he would be deported or when he would return. Miller was unable to get his belongings to him, unable to make one final visit in Tacoma or anywhere else.

“He’s going to be dropped off in Bogotá, Colombia, with the clothes he has on his back,” she said, noting he was detained in June, so he didn’t have a coat. “He has a broken foot, and they won’t even let him keep the crutches.”

A week later, with only his passport in hand, Aguirre boarded a flight for Colombia.