ICE looks to WA tribes to house detained immigrants

As the Trump administration searches for more space to detain immigrants, it is approaching Washington tribes to see if they will participate.

The Nisqually Tribal Council said in a statement Friday evening it learned that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been talking to one of its staff members without consulting the council.

The council said it also discovered ICE has been reaching out to other tribal governments and cities in Washington in an attempt to secure detention space.

For its part, the Nisqually Indian Tribe, whose reservation lies east of Olympia and which has a 288-bed correctional facility built in part with federal funds, is telling ICE no, according to the council.

“The Nisqually people are not in favor of, nor will the tribal council allow, the detention of individuals by ICE on our reservation or in our facilities,” said Tribal Chair E.K. Choke in the statement.

Reached earlier by phone Friday, Choke said he was unaware of any discussion happening between Nisqually and ICE until the tribe was contacted by The Seattle Times, which had received information about talks regarding detention space.

“I’m actually just investigating the claims myself,” Choke said.

ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions about seeking detention space from the tribe.

The Trump administration has said it wants to dramatically increase detention capacity as it carries out its mass deportation plans. Congress has allocated billions of dollars for that purpose.

The administration is planning to expand detention at military sites across the country, The New York Times has reported. It is also considering sites along the Oregon coast, including the town of Newport — though officials there have strongly objected.

In Washington, the 1,575-bed Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, the region’s only immigrant detention center, has become crowded. At one point this past summer, ICE transferred immigrants held there to Alaska.

The unusual possibility of detaining immigrants on tribal lands raises new questions.

“This is so mind-boggling,” said lawyer Leila Kang of Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. “I’m trying to wrap my head around what this could look like.”

She wondered whether immigration judges would hear cases on tribal land. Currently, people held at the Tacoma detention center appear in an immigration court inside the facility.

She also questioned who would provide medical care in detention facilities on tribal land. Complaints about conditions at the Tacoma detention center are legion, including relating to medical care, but at least a known quantity provides that care, the ICE Health Service Corps, Kang said.

Because of tribal sovereignty, such facilities would circumvent state authority, according to Gabe Galanda, a Seattle attorney focused on Native American law and rights. So Washington’s Department of Health, which has been seeking access to the Tacoma detention center to conduct inspections, would have no standing to do the same on tribal land, he said.

The Bill of Rights does not apply on reservations, Galanda added. That could mean detained immigrants have fewer rights, as would any protesters, who could not rely on First Amendment protections, he said.

“It’s certainly a tribe’s prerogative to work with ICE,” Galanda continued. “But I think there are repercussions to that decision that a tribal nation should think long and hard about, including the message it would send to its reservation population.”

He noted many tribal communities have migrants living among them, including immigrants married to Native Americans.

Still, he said, the federal government has slashed funding going to tribes, and that might prompt some to accept money from ICE to detain immigrants.

Whether the federal government could detain immigrants on reservations without tribes’ consent is unclear. Reservations are made up in large part of “trust land,” held by the federal government for the benefit of tribes. Some treaties and internal policies of many federal agencies — including Homeland Security, of which ICE is a part — require consultation with tribal governments before taking action that impacts sovereign rights, according to Galanda.

In saying no to ICE, the Nisqually tribe said it was making a decision “consistent with the tribe’s history and values, which have always included treating all individuals with humanity and compassion.”