People who monitor immigration enforcement activity in Washington state say there has been an uptick over the last several weeks.
According to the Deportation Data Project, based at the University of California Berkeley and UCLA, ICE officers have arrested more people in Washington believed to be in the U.S. unlawfully than at any point in the last three years.
Most of these individuals are taken to the ICE detention center in Tacoma. U.S. Rep. Emily Randall of the 6th Congressional District has visited the facility several times. The detention center, which is located in her district, is operated by the private GEO Group.
ICE has not responded to KNKX's request for comment.
KNKX Morning Edition host Kirsten Kendrick spoke with Randall about the detention center.
Hear the full interview by clicking ''Listen" above.
Transcript
KNKX's Kirsten Kendrick: People with loved ones being detained have complained about poor living conditions at this ICE facility, such as a lack of access to medical care, undercooked food, cloudy drinking water. What have you seen firsthand?
Rep. Emily Randall: I've seen some of the food, and I've never seen like raw food, but I don't — that doesn't to me mean that it's never happened. You know, we've gone to visit the dry storage in the kitchen, and it seems to be, like, kept in good working order and clean. But over and over, we hear these stories from individuals and their families and their attorneys about what it's like inside, and I don't think those come from nowhere.
Kendrick: Can you tell us a little bit more about the stories you're hearing?
Randall: I mean the most egregious to me, and what we've heard from so many individuals, is the challenges accessing healthcare. I've been a few times to visit with Dr. Maxine Dexter, a member from Oregon, a fellow freshman, and you know, she comes up from Portland because her neighbors are getting detained here too.
We've met with individuals who need catheters in order to use the bathroom, and are only given a certain number of catheters a day. And if they need to go to the bathroom more often, then they are responsible for rinsing them out in the sink, and that is not a sanitary condition. That's not good medical practice. We hear from folks who go to the clinic and are only ever given ibuprofen, no matter what their pain is. And then we hear from folks who are trying to get referred to a specialist but aren't taken into community.
Kendrick: I wanted to talk about the difference in handling immigration issues in different administrations. Under President Obama, more people were deported than under any other president. He sent more than three million people back to their countries of origin. What's different about how the Trump administration is handling this issue, and the fact that Congress has oversight over these facilities, but it doesn't seem to be making a difference?
Randall: So I obviously wasn't in Congress under previous presidential administrations, but in talking to colleagues who have been in office for a long time in Democratic administrations and Republican administrations alike, there are a few things that are really markedly different.
One is that when previous administrations would carry out immigration raids, the members of Congress would usually get a heads up that there was going to be ICE or CBP [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] activity in their district. That doesn't happen anymore. We are caught just by surprise as members in community when ICE shows up, and it's often really hard for us to get answers from Department of Homeland Security about whether there is in fact an enforcement effort. And that's a real challenge for our ability to conduct oversight and to ensure that our function as a congressional check and balance on the presidential administration is working properly.
You know, the other thing that we're seeing is truly terrorizing communities. Under the Obama administration, we didn't see ICE agents shooting American citizens in the street. We didn't see ICE agents pulling grandmothers out of their cars with their grandchildren in the back seat in car seats. We didn't see the kind of fear and violence that is happening and has happened in Los Angeles and Minneapolis and Chicago across the country. And, you know, I can't be responsible for what any president before this one did, but it's my job to ensure that the activity that this executive branch is carrying out is legal and constitutional, and if it's not, to tell the truth about what's happening.
Kendrick: Democrat Emily Randall represents Washington's 6th District in Congress. Thank you for joining us today.
Randall: Thank you.
