Hundreds rally at ICE center in Tacoma after detention of union members

Hundreds of union workers and immigrant rights advocates rallied Thursday evening outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Tacoma to protest the arrest of dozens of people, including the leader of a farmworker union in Skagit County and a technician and union member at UW Medicine.

The crowd waved signs and chanted “free them all,” drawing attention to the increase in ICE arrests in recent weeks and hundreds of people currently held in the facility.

In particular, signs and statements focused on two people who were recently detained by ICE agents — Alfredo Juarez Zeferino, who organized a farmworker union and worked on behalf of farmworker rights, and Lewelyn Dixon, a member of SEIU Local 925, who works as a lab technician at UW Medicine.

"You know when you target one of us, you target all of us,” said Cherika Carter, secretary treasurer of the Washington State Labor Council AFL-CIO, who spoke at the rally. “The freedom to protest, to speak, to organize, to win is under attack.”

The number of detainees at the Northwest ICE Process Center in Tacoma has steadily increased since President Trump took office, up from 718 people on Jan. 21 to 880 people on March 17, according to government data on ICE’s website and TRAC. The facility’s capacity is 1,575.

Juarez, a farmworker activist known in his community as “Lelo,” was taken into ICE custody on March 25 and is being held in Tacoma. As a teenager, he helped found a farmworker union based in Skagit County, Familias Unidas por la Justicia, and later served on the City of Bellingham's Immigration Advisory Board.

RELATED: ICE detains leader of farmworker union in northwest Washington state

Immigration officials cited a 2018 deportation order for Juarez, 25, when asked about his arrest. It’s unclear if the order stems from a traffic stop in 2015, when Juarez was briefly placed in ICE custody at age 15 after he reportedly could not provide ID to local police officers. Advocates who work with Juarez say he was unaware of the deportation order.

Dixon, 64, is a lab technician at UW Medicine and a green card holder who has lived in the U.S. since she was 14. She was on her way back to the Seattle area on Feb. 28 after visiting family in the Philippines when she was arrested at Sea-Tac airport and sent to the detention facility in Tacoma.

Dale Siewert, Dixon's coworker and leader of SEIU 925's UW chapter, said his fellow workers at UW Medicine were feeling Dixon's absence. Friday marks one month since she was detained.

“[Lewelyn's] there every day, working extra hours to take care of the patients, and provide, so we can provide the care that they deserve. And so without her, we're really feeling that loss," Siewert said on X.

Her lawyer, Benjamin Osorio, said Dixon was detained because of a nonviolent conviction from 2001, for embezzlement. Green card holders with certain kinds of criminal histories are deportable, but Osorio said Dixon does not meet those criteria.

RELATED: UW Medicine employee, green card holder detained by ICE in Tacoma

“Unions knew the Trump administration would make deportation a priority and we are incensed by how it is being used as a strategy to target union organizers and protestors,” said Katie Garrow, executive secretary treasurer of MLK Labor, the labor council in King County. “The goal is to create fear and chaos so they can enact their extreme agenda. MLK Labor joins the labor community in demanding Lelo and Lewelyn’s release.”

U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement says it does not indiscriminately conduct enforcement actions on random people, and that its targeted enforcement actions are based on intelligence-driven leads focused on people identified for arrest and removal from the country.

According to the most recent data published on ICE’s website, 59% of detainees held at the Tacoma facility are listed as non-criminal, which the agency describes as “immigration violators without any known criminal convictions or pending charges” at the time of arrest.