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Trans and Other Marchers Block Seattle Street, Protesting Immigration Policies

Trans and Other Marchers Block Seattle Street, Protesting Immigration Policies

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Government contracts with private prisons provide an incentive to round up immigrants, they say.

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Protesters for immigrants' rights, including group focusing on transgender issues, blocked a major intersection in downtown Seattle today to denounce a system they say provides incentives to detain immigrants.

For about two hours, more than 30 demonstrators shut down the intersection of Madison Street and Third Avenue, near the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office, protesting the terms of ICE's contract with Geo Group, a private company that operates the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, where undocumented immigrants are detained pending deportation. The contract guarantees at least 800 beds to be filled at the center at any time, according to a press release from the protesters. Such quotas often lead to racial profiling and give ICE agents an incentive to round up immigants, Katie Rickman, an activist with Trans and/or Women's Action Camp, told The Advocate Monday evening.

Trans and/or Women's Action Camp joined with NWDC Resistance and the Not1More movement for today's protest to bring attention to what it calls inhumane treatment of transgender detainees at all detention centers, including the Tacoma center.

"Trans people in detention are often placed in solitary confinement," Rickman said. "It's pretty awful."

A recent Seattle Times editorial also denounced the use of such quotas at immigration detention centers around the nation. "Detention of any civil prisoner should be based on the severity of the alleged crimes, not on a bed quota that guarantees private prisons make a profit at the expense of human rights of detainees," the editorial read. The Times cited a higher number, 1,181, for the quota at the Tacoma center, which has a capacity of 1,575.

The protesters ended their action after about two hours, and no arrests were made, Rickman said. They live-streamed the demonstration on the Web, she said, and it received about 2,000 views nationally, she said. The groups plan more joint actions in September.

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Trudy Ring

Trudy Ring is The Advocate’s senior politics editor and copy chief. She has been a reporter and editor for daily newspapers and LGBTQ+ weeklies/monthlies, trade magazines, and reference books. She is a political junkie who thinks even the wonkiest details are fascinating, and she always loves to see political candidates who are groundbreaking in some way. She enjoys writing about other topics as well, including religion (she’s interested in what people believe and why), literature, theater, and film. Trudy is a proud “old movie weirdo” and loves the Hollywood films of the 1930s and ’40s above all others. Other interests include classic rock music (Bruce Springsteen rules!) and history. Oh, and she was a Jeopardy! contestant back in 1998 and won two games. Not up there with Amy Schneider, but Trudy still takes pride in this achievement.
Trudy Ring is The Advocate’s senior politics editor and copy chief. She has been a reporter and editor for daily newspapers and LGBTQ+ weeklies/monthlies, trade magazines, and reference books. She is a political junkie who thinks even the wonkiest details are fascinating, and she always loves to see political candidates who are groundbreaking in some way. She enjoys writing about other topics as well, including religion (she’s interested in what people believe and why), literature, theater, and film. Trudy is a proud “old movie weirdo” and loves the Hollywood films of the 1930s and ’40s above all others. Other interests include classic rock music (Bruce Springsteen rules!) and history. Oh, and she was a Jeopardy! contestant back in 1998 and won two games. Not up there with Amy Schneider, but Trudy still takes pride in this achievement.