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<h1>Update on Tacoma, WA Detention Center Hunger Strike</h1>
<div id="single-date" class="date">April 21, 2014</div>
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<div class="tags"><a href="http://prisonbooks.info/tag/solidarity/"
rel="tag">http://prisonbooks.info/2014/04/21/update-on-tacoma-wa-detention-center-hunger-strike/#more-4543<br>
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<p style="font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit;">From <a
href="http://www.notonemoredeportation.com/" target="_blank">Not One
More Deportation</a></p>
<p>Tacoma, WA – As supporters looked on, approximately 130 people held
at the Northwest Detention Center were taken from the facility this
morning as part of its weekly deportation regime. At least five hunger
strikers were among those deported, according to an attorney who
visited the facility on Sunday. A hunger strike supporter holding a
vigil outside the center observed two buses leaving at 3 a.m. under
cover of darkness. Supporters who arrived at dawn to offer witness to
the deportations watched six more vehicles, marked “GEO Transport,”
(five buses and a van) leaving the center. In what has become a new
tactic since the February 24th action that stopped 120 deportations,
the buses themselves were used to block supporters from seeing people
loaded in chains. Despite these efforts, supporters lined the
sidewalk as the buses pulled out, making eye contact with those inside
the buses, and chanting, “You are not alone!” and “The struggle
continues!”</p>
<p>Hunger striker Salvador Chavez Salazar, who first arrived in the
U.S. at the age of 15, was among those deported this morning. The
29-year-old father of two U.S. citizen children was held in the
detention center for two and a half months following a DUI arrest. In a
recording made on the eve of his deportation (audio and translation
available upon request), he described his fifteen years of labor in the
U.S., which included landscaping, picking cherries, onions, and apples,
and gathering forest items in the forests outside his Aberdeen, WA
home. He explained why he participated in both waves of the hunger
strike despite knowing he would most likely be deported, stating, “It
is an injustice for all of us who are locked up in here,” and
expressing hope that his actions would benefit future detainees.
He described facing deportation with only the clothes on his back,
despite having put in a request to ICE for his family to bring him a
suitcase with fifteen days notice. He also described how the facility
continues to profit even after deportations, explaining that the money
on detainees’ phone accounts is not returned to them. His greatest
grief at leaving his home was for the harm to his 4-year-old US-citizen
daughters: “Deportations, they affect the children the most, that’s the
truth. Almost everyone who is here, all of the people here are fathers
with families.”<span id="more-4543"></span></p>
<p>This weekly round of deportations at the NWDC comes as Ramon Mendoza
Pascual and J. Cipriano Rios Alegria continue their hunger strike in
medical isolation, under solitary confinement sentences. The link
between their peaceful protest and their confinement became even
clearer last Friday, when Mr. Mendoza was asked if he would end his
hunger strike in exchange for being returned to the general population.
He declined. He has now been on hunger strike for 35 out of the last 39
days, protesting the on-going deportations and the deplorable detention
center conditions.</p>
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San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
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