Introduction

Hello, my name is Andrew Weymouth and I have worked with the University of Idaho Library as the Digital Initiatives Librarian in the Center for Digital Inquiry and Learning department (CDIL) since August 2023. My work generally consists of creating and maintaining our digital collections, collaborating with students and faculty on fellowship programs, helping to rethink processes and introducing new digital scholarship tools to the department.

✺

The Tideflats

Alt: Aerial map of the Tideflats area from the midcentury
Map of the Industrial Area of Tacoma, Washington, created by the National Bank of Washington, ca. 1950s.

The project I’ll be talking about today is the result of a 2022 Storytelling Fellows for the University of Washington. The central focus is an industrial area just south of downtown Tacoma, Washington spanning 3,000 acres known as the Tideflats. Since Tacoma was established as a port city in the 1870s, the Tideflats have been utilized to connect shipping trade from Commencement Bay on the Puget Sound to the Northern Pacific Railroad.

Alt: Detail of the above map
Map of the Industrial Area of Tacoma, Washington, created by the National Bank of Washington, ca. 1950s, detail.
In particular, I was interested in one, specific, 12 acre plot on the we can see marked as 186 on the map here, where the Northwest Detention Center is now located.

1

Established by a corporation called GEO Group working under contract on behalf of the US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, the 1,575 bed detention center (originally around 500 beds when it opened in 2004)2 generates 57 million in annual revenue at full occupancy.3 The Center is abutted by the Puyallup River to the south, the City Waterway to the North and intersected by the Northern Pacific Railway line. The center isn’t visible from most areas of downtown Tacoma, but less than an hour’s walk away from it. Once there, the facility blends seamlessly alongside the other expansive, gray structures that sprawl across the Tideflats.

The detention center has been observed violating both international human rights law and Constitutional citizen protections. Hundreds of inmates engaged in multiple hunger strikes in response to repeated allegations of medical neglect, unsanitary conditions, wage theft, delayed immigration hearings and sexual assault.4

✺


  1. The Tacoma Daily Ledger. August 2, 1931, page 9. ↩

  2. “Detention Center Discord - Opening Ceremony: - News Tribune, The (Tacoma, WA) - April 8, 2004 - Page B01.” n.d., 2. ↩

  3. Chapter Eight Shadow Prisons: Inside Private Immigrant Detention Centers.” 2017. In Inside Private Prisons, by Lauren-Brooke Eisen, 137–68. Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.7312/eise17970-009. ↩

  4. “Conditions at the Northwest Detention Center.” 2022. Center for Human Rights (blog). July 28, 2022. https://jsis.washington.edu/humanrights/projects/human-rights-at-home/conditions-at-the-northwest-detention-center/. ↩