Between Worlds/Behind Bars

Short Synopsis

A five part radio series exploring immigration detention in the Puget Sound area from its roots in the 1930's as "Seattle's Ellis Island" to today's privately run Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma's Tideflats.

Description/Treatment

Project Description

From the dark days of the Chinese Exclusion Act to post-9/11 policies that emphasize the incarceration of undocumented immigrants, immigration detention has a controversial history in both our nation and in the Puget Sound region.

Between Worlds/Behind Bars will explore immigration detention in Seattle from its roots in the 1930’s at Seattle’s “Ellis Island” on the edge of the International District to today’s privately-run Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma’s tideflats.

Washington State has become a front line in our nation’s immigration debate. Border patrols are on the increase as are workplace immigration raids. The Northwest Detention Center has steadily expanded to keep up with shifting immigration policies.

While the new Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano, has vowed to investigate ICE’s immigration raid practices, and the Obama Administration says it is devoted to comprehensive immigration reform, the current economic crisis has eclipsed immigration as a domestic issue.

Despite this, the Northwest Detention Center is slated to expand again and immigration detention continues to be an ever-present reality for immigrant communities in the Puget Sound region.

This five-part series will use intimate character driven and first-person segments to explore the history and future of immigration detention in Puget Sound. Each segment will be 7-8 minutes in length, and co-producers Jessica Partnow, Alex Stonehill and Sarah Stuteville will alternate in the role of lead producer on each segment, lending the series a diverse and textured feel.

Segment Details

Segment 1: Seattle’s Ellis Island
In this segment we will explore the history of Seattle’s oldest immigration detention facility and its role in immigration in Seattle in the 1930s and 40s. The imposing brick building on the southern edge of the International District – once known as Seattle’s Ellis Island – housed immigrants detained under the Chinese Exclusion Act, which lasted from 1882 to 1943. Many of Seattle’s new arrivals saw its hallways from the 1930s until it closed in 2004

After its abandonment for the much larger Tacoma facility, the building stood vacant for 4 years until it was bought by a group of Seattle entrepreneurs who hoped to convert it into office space in 2008. As of March 2009 the space remains undeveloped and we will use this eerie setting to explore the early years of immigration detention in Seattle, and the current battle to include a tribute to the building’s history in its new incarnation as commercial space.

Voices in this segment will include experts from the Wing Luke Asian Museum and the Chinatown International District Preservation and Development Authority, a longtime neighborhood resident and of course of the entrepreneurs wondering what to do with the historic space they now own. Segment producer: Sarah Stuteville.

Segment 2: Detained in the City of Destiny
In this segment we transition from the history of immigration detention in our region to its current epicenter, Tacoma’s Northwest Detention Center, built in the wake of 9/11 immigration policy changes. Our focus will be on the post-9/11 budget increases and policy shifts that have transformed immigration detention in recent years, and how those changes and the Northwest Detention Center specifically have impacted the Tacoma community.

Sprawling over the industrialized mud flats just below downtown Tacoma, Washington, few in the Puget Sound area know the Northwest Detention Center exists. But this low grey building set among a tangle of service roads and circled by glinting spirals of razor wire, has dramatically changed the legal landscape for foreign-born residents and undocumented people in the Pacific Northwest.

Since its opening four years ago, immigration cases processed here have spiked from 2,200 to 12,000. Managed by private contractor GEO, the center has weathered allegations of abuse, mismanagement, and arrest of US citizens. Supporters defend it as a necessary security measure and cite jobs created through the NWDC in an economically depressed city, nicknamed the City of Destiny.

Interviewees for this segment will include ICE officials Lorie Dankers and Neil Clark who will discuss the increasing need for immigration detention space and take us on a tour of the center. We’ll also talk to Sigrun Freeman, Immigrant Outreach Director at Tacoma’s Northwest Leadership Foundation, who has spearheaded a citywide effort to rally social service providers to meet the growing needs of immigrants and detainees affected by the Northwest Detention Center. Other characters will include a Tacoma City official exploring the positive and negative impacts of the NWDC on the city, and Ms. B, a Haitian asylum seeker who was detained in Tacoma for three years. Segment Producer: Alex Stonehill.

Segment 3: Washington on the Front Lines
This segment will focus on Washington’s increasingly significant role in the national immigration debate. Our state has seen increased checkpoints and border patrol activity, and been the site of numerous immigration raids. Through the lens of one man’s story, we’ll explore Washington’s immigration battle and ICE’s new techniques for seeking out and arresting illegal immigrants.

Rene Martinez, husband and father of two US citizen children, worked legally at Emerald Downs for ten years before he was picked up in an immigration raid with a lapsed work permit and sent to the Northwest Detention Center. Released on a $15,000 bond, Martinez is unable to work legally while Immigration & Customs Enforcement processes his case.

With an international border, seaports, and recent influx of immigrants, Washington State has become a focus for ICE’s Detention and Removal Operations. Recent years have seen unprecedented increases in border patrol activity and immigration checkpoints in Washington State. While the new administration in “the other Washington” has vowed to examine ICE’s policies, the first workplace immigration raid under the Obama Administration occurred in Bellingham on February 24th 2009.

In this segment, we’ll visit immigration checkpoints to explore the development of new immigration monitoring practices, and we’ll follow the path raid arrestees take to the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma. We’ll also include tape of Martinez discussing the impact his time at the NWDC has had on his life and revisit the site of his arrest at Emerald Downs. Segment producer: Jessica Partnow.

Segment 4: Banished to Siberia
In this segment, we’ll explore an unexpected casualty of immigration detention practices: legal immigrants, especially those who came to the US as young children, who are now being deported after being convicted of crimes. We’ll also look at an interesting immigration loophole: sometimes people can be deported, but their home countries won’t accept them back. Eventually, ICE is forced to release them back into the community in a limbo state – officially deported, but a lawful resident for all intents and purposes.

Vitaliy Budimir, 22, came to Washington from Siberia with his family when he was ten years old. Though he’s always been a legal permanent resident, a felony charge for cocaine at 19 has landed him in the Northwest Detention Center with the threat of deportation to Russia hanging over his head. Despite common assumptions that immigration law was tightened as a result of 9/11, the laws affecting Vitaliy’s case, which require deportation for an expanded list of crimes, were enacted under the Clinton Administration in 1996.

Scenes in this segment will include an emotional visit to his family in Spokane, who were shocked both by Vitaliy’s involvement in criminal activities and by the fact that punishment for their son – who considers himself culturally American – would be deportation. We will also include tape from a visit to Vitaliy inside the detention center in February.

On June 12th an immigration judge will decide whether Vitaliy will be put on a plane back to Siberia or released into the community here – officially deported but living in limbo until Russia agrees to accept him. Depending on the outcome, we will either interview Vitaliy over the phone from Siberia or follow him on a typical day living with the constant threat of deportation. We will also include tape from Pramila Jayapal, Executive Director of OneAmerica, who will offer an overview of shifts in immigration law in recent decades. Segment producer: Sarah Stuteville

Segment 5: The Battle in Our Backyard
The final segment in our series will look at the growing controversy surrounding privatization of immigration detention facilities, in particular the GEO Group, which operates the Northwest Detention Center. We’ll explore the many charges that have been leveled against the group, from human rights abuses to environmental degradation.

ICE has contracted the GEO Group, one of the world’s largest private detention companies, to manage the Northwest Detention Center. But the government’s recent push to privatize detention facilities has been met with widespread criticism and controversy surrounding GEO’s treatment of detainees at its 50+ facilities in the United States has reached a boiling point.

In February of this year, immigrant detainees at a GEO-run prison in Texas staged a two-day uprising to protest inadequate medical treatment, reportedly lighting fires and stealing guards’ communication equipment. A similar riot took place in Indiana in 2007. Here in Tacoma, a local citizen’s group has become a thorn in the corporation’s side, filing regular environmental appeals challenging GEO’s attempts to expand the NWDC onto ground contaminated with toxic waste. Last summer, Seattle University and OneAmerica released a scathing report on human rights violations within the center.

But the NWDC has largely managed to stay out of the news and below the radar of most citizens in the region, even as GEO renegotiates its contract for 2009 and plans to increase the facility’s capacity by 500 beds by September.

In this segment we will take a tour of the Superfund site that is home to the Northwest Detention Center with local citizen rights activists working to stop the expansion on environmental grounds. We will also talk with Raven Lidman who led student teams in producing last summer’s report on the Detention Center, with an advocate who can speak to national issues of immigration detention, and with representatives from GEO. Segment producer: Jessica Partnow