A court battle over open records and the company that operates the Northwest Detention Center has been avoided.

The GEO Group, which has operated the 1,030-bed Northwest Detention Center since 2004, filed a petition in Pierce County Superior Court last week to block the release of several documents requested through public-disclosure laws.

Here’s what happened:

Tim Smith of the Bill of Rights Defense League filed the request to obtain tax records from The GEO Group. He said he filed the records to “better understand the operations of the facility and current efforts to expand its operations.” The detention center will expand by 545 beds. The $40 million project should be completed by September 2009.

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The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project put out a press release opposing the expansion of the Northwest Detention Center, which I wrote about last week.

Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP) today expressed its opposition to the decision of the Department of Homeland Security to expand the capacity of the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington. According to local news reports, the private contractor which runs the facility, the GEO Corporation, will be expanding the capacity of the detention center by 50% so that it can hold up to 1,500 individual at a time.

“The widespread detention of individuals because of civil violations of immigration law is one of the clearest examples of how our current immigration system is failing,” said Jorge L. Barón, NWIRP’s Executive Director. “Although many people in our community do not realize this, a significant proportion of the individuals detained at the Tacoma detention center have resided in the United States for many years and have either no criminal record or a record composed of only traffic offenses. Detaining these individuals while their cases are processed before the immigration court results in the needless separation of family members and makes it harder for people to obtain legal representation.”

Around 90 percent of the individuals who are detained at the Tacoma detention center are unable to obtain an attorney to represent them in their deportation (or “removal”) cases.

Northwest Immigrant Rights Project provides presentations to individuals detained at the Northwest Detention Center through its Legal Orientation Program (LOP). During these presentations, detainees have the opportunity to learn about immigration court procedures and avenues to pursue legal immigration status. Detainees also have the opportunity to meet with a legal advocate who can access the person’s options in their individual immigration case. NWIRP staff attorneys are also able to take on a limited number of cases for direct representation before the immigration court.

I've just written something for tomorrow's paper about the ending (for most) of the quarantine at the Northwest Detention Center on Tacoma's Tideflats.

Click below to read it:

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I talked to a spokeswoman at Immigration and Customs Enforcement about the Washington Post series on health care in detention centers. The only death at the 1,000-bed Northwest Detention Center on the Tideflats was listed as "questionable" by the Post.

My story (possibly for tomorrow’s paper) is below:

=> Read more!

There will be another anti-Northwest Detention Center protest this weekend. From Infoshop News:

This coming Saturday there will be a rally starting in People's Park at 12 PM in the Hilltop district of Tacoma. At 1 PM we will leave the park and head down the hill.

As it stands right now, no one even knows about the existence of the Northwest Detention Center. The families affected by the raids and those who support them are aware of its existence. But the general population does not know.

This blackout and secrecy has gone on for too long. Those of us with the privilege and ability to do something have done nothing. Those of us least affected by the raids have sat by for too long while the process of detention, removal and terror continues unabated.

Do not let this concentration camp remain a secret. Come to Tacoma on Saturday and help us bring the simple KNOWLEDGE of its existence to the public and show the city, ICE and the Department of Homeland Security that we will not stand for the Detention Center's presence any longer.

Remember, the path of the good German was easy to take. Time is running out. We will not end the raids tomorrow. But we will certainly not end them doing nothing.

I realize I've been slacking with updating the blog. There's good reason.

I sent a records request to the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department:
























And it returned almost 1,700 pages:























And I've had to boil it into something semi-readable:

Tom McCarthy, the protester who applied for the permit for this weekend’s Tacoma protests, claimed success. And even though he wasn't a fan of the way The News Tribune handled the coverage, he's always game for talking to reporters. Gotta give credit for that.

“It was very successful. There are a lot of people who know about the detention center who didn’t know about it before. And in Olympia, there’s a port militarization resistance movement. It’s continuing to move the debate from protests of these war policies to resistance of these war policies.”

“The goal is to make the politicians realize there’s a political and financial cost to continuing a war that the American people don’t want.”

He said he was arrested for carrying a bullhorn. Naturally, he isn’t happy.

“I’m absolutely outraged at the blatant violation of constitutional rights of folks who were arrested in Tacoma. The actions of the police department in Tacoma are going to cost my city a lot of money in lawsuits because they were blatantly violations of people’s constitutional rights.”

He says arrests show the depth of commitment.

“When you see a situation where some people are arrested and then they continue to speak out against it, it shows a commitment. I think people understand that most people a lot of people wouldn’t risk arrest ever. When you see that, it shows the depth of commitment to ending the war and the violation of human rights down at the Northwest Detention Center.”

I've talked to people about the effectiveness of protests in Tacoma and Olympia this weekend. The only person who declined to talk ("Your spin hurts the cause!") was a rep for Students for a Democratic Society.

I wanted to get the police perspective.

Mark Fulghum, the Tacoma Police Department spokesman, wasn’t thrilled about the protests. He said the department was forced to change schedules and cut back on patrols in other parts of the city to staff the event.

“It’s disruptive,” he said. “We had to pull in people from other resources and other parts of the city for it. It’s really an inconvenience.”

I found a video of an arrest at this weekend's protest on YouTube. Watch it below, but a bit of warning: It does contain some adult language.

Also, do you have any videos of the protest? I saw quite a few people with video and still cameras. If so, let me know and I'll link to it.

Here's another video of the protest. It looks like it was shot with a cell-phone camera.

We're all about fairness here at Word on the Street. I received an e-mail Sunday accusing me of spin in my story about the immigration protests this weekend. Personally, I called it like I saw it -- the promises to "shut down" downtown Tacoma didn't come to fruition. Most people I witnessed didn't take the leaflets. I consulted other impartial bystanders before coming to this conclusion.

True, in the midst of the protest, it probably seemed like downtown was shut down. But when the marchers moved on to the next block, life pretty much resumed.

But I'll admit the protesters achieved their main goal: More people know about the Northwest Detention Center than before. It's tough to quantify, but between eyewitnesses, word of mouth, the Internet, coverage in the Trib and coverage in the broadcast media, quite a few people heard about it.

And, as I mentioned before, since we're all about fairness, I'll post a few links to postings about the protests. They're quite pro-protest and at times stoop to personal attacks, but it is a different point of view. So here's a first-person account of the story.

Here is an open letter to the counter-protester.

And here is a posting written after Day 1 of the protest. I think it's safe to say the author took umbrage with my article and Kits Merryman's column about the detention center. I would refute parts of it about the coverage, but I'll just let them have their say, chalk it up to differing opinions and move on.

Here's some video I took from the sidewalk on Pacific Avenue. This is the entire scope of the protests.