Editor’s note: This story originally appeared in the Vashon High School newspaper, The Riptide, on Dec. 15. It is included here with permission.

A man in a dark uniform stands with his hand resting against a tall chain-link gate. A low voice issues from a walkie talkie strapped to his shirt, signaling that it’s time. The group of people lined up behind the guard step swiftly and deliberately through the open gate, their few possessions flung across their shoulders in black garbage bags.

These men have just been released from the Tacoma Northwest Detention Center (NWDC), a privately owned and operated holding facility for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, otherwise known as ICE.

This center detains any immigrants from Oregon, Washington or Alaska who are awaiting a ruling by a judge. A great deal of these detainees are asylum seekers who have fled their native countries in search of a safer home.

They have either deliberately gone to an immigration officer on the U.S. border in an attempt to secure asylum or have been arrested for crimes as insignificant as having a broken tail light, and have opted to create a case for asylum instead of being deported.

The question of whether the NWDC is the best place for the job is up for debate. Some tell stories of relative freedom within the facility and good relations with the administration, while others express a hatred for the place, complaining of poor food, racist staff and a lack of activities during the long wait for a court date.

A former detainee, a Nigerian man named Timileyin — a name chosen to protect his privacy — sits in a worn cushioned chair. He lives with his family in the back of a men’s house in Tacoma, along with various other former detainees who are transitioning from living in the detention center.

As he speaks, a group of men cycle through the living room, each taking time to kneel on the carpeted floor and face Mecca as they pray to Allah.

After living through years of conflict between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria, Timileyin, his wife and child fled their country in search of a safer home. They flew through various South American countries on their way to the Mexico-U.S. border.

He presented his case to the immigration officials on the border and, after a series of interviews, agreed to wait until his case could be reviewed by a judge.

“I don’t know that I am going to spend six months in detention,” Timileyin said in broken English.

Throughout the interview, he used the present tense to talk about his time in the NWDC.

“My mind is: Maybe they are going to interview us, and they will let me know if I can go to court [or not]. I never knew that it would take six months.”

After arriving, he was taken to the NWDC and separated from his family. He didn’t know where they would sleep or how they would get food while he was being detained.

One of the only things that kept him going through that time was the thought of his court date.

“I don’t know if I’m going to win the case or not,” Timileyin said, speaking of the past. “I just know that I’m going to know my fate on this date. So I have my mind on that date.”

While in the center, he volunteered for a dollar a day to clean the bathrooms and used that money to buy extra food and to use the phone.

“There is a freedom to move around,” Timileyin said. “We are allowed to go out to play football and basketball for one hour every day. Every Sunday, we are allowed to go to church. We are allowed to take a shower whenever we want, and there are three big TVs there [where] we can watch any channel.”

He felt mostly satisfied with the accommodations of the facility — one time, he went to his officer due to a pain in his chest, and they took him to the doctor, who then gave him the proper medication for it.

About a year ago, a judge ruled not to deport Timileyin, granting him asylum.

Now he works night shifts as a caregiver at a retirement home and goes to Charter College in Fife during the daytime. He works with newly released detainees — who are living with him in the men’s house — helping them to figure out what they are going to do next.

“Any new immigrant who came out from detention, I assist them in how to get to wherever they are going,” Timileyin said.

Other detainees hold more gloomy views of the NWDC, such as David — a name chosen to protect his identity — who was released about a week ago.

“It’s very hard to be inside,” David said. “They take away a part of your life. I’m only 20 years old, and they took a lot of my time.”

David fled his country — which cannot be named for his safety — due to a conflict with the government. He spent months traveling covertly through Latin America and Mexico to the U.S. border, where he was smuggled across illegally.

“To cross the border is horrible,” David said. “We couldn’t sleep because we were constantly surrounded by dangerous animals. We were always afraid and ate only one meal a day, with very little water.”

Once in the U.S., he encountered almost ubiquitous racism in southern California and was quickly referred to ICE while looking for work. He went to four separate detention centers over the course of five-and-a-half months while awaiting his court date.

In Arizona, the detention administration wrote “perros,” or dogs, on the immigrants’ water bottles as a racial slur. In all of the centers, he found he wasn’t treated as a human being and felt unsatisfied with the management.

David would sometimes refrain from eating because the food was so bad in the NWDC.

A volunteer from the Tacoma-based nonprofit Advocates for Immigrants in Detention Northwest (AID NW), Donna Knudson, said the detainees complain about the food a lot.

“One young man said that he had lost 11 pounds because he was from India and vegetarian,” said Kathy Drouhard, a volunteer for AID NW. “He could ask for a specialized diet, but it took several days to get it, and it wasn’t very good food.”

After months of waiting, David finally reached his court date and presented his case.

“Thank God that my testimony was enough to touch [the] judge’s heart,” he said. “Thank God that I got asylum.”

Now freed, he wants to start a support group for immigrant youth.

“There are a lot of people out there who are in need, who are very lonely and sad,” David said.

A group of volunteers with AID NW stay in an RV outside of the NWDC gate every afternoon to provide supplies and assistance to detainees as soon as they are released. There is also a substantial group of islanders who volunteer each week to support detainees at this site.

“The people that are detained here are in limbo, and so when they are released, they are just dropped off in the tideflats with nowhere to go,” Drouhard said. “We are just giving them a little bridge to where they need to get to.”

The organization mostly deals with the detainees’ physical needs. However, they also help out with transportation, communication and legal assistance.

“They come out with all of their stuff in a garbage bag, so we give them backpacks, and we give them water, food and snacks,” Drouhard said. “They usually need to use a phone to call their family or sponsor that’s helping them buy a plane ticket or picking them up. Sometimes they need to stay in a house if they’re taking a Greyhound bus in the morning, so we have a place for that, too.”

Some of the people being released are merely out on bond and therefore have to return to the NWDC for their hearing with the Tacoma Immigration Court. The AID NW volunteers help them to figure out where they are going to go until they have to come back.

There has been a big debate about whether private detention centers are better or worse than public centers.

The NWDC separates people who are merely seeking asylum and haven’t committed a crime from those who have been arrested for something more dangerous, so there is a sense of safety among the detainees.

This is unlike public prisons where everyone, regardless of crime, is held in the same area. Without the detention center, all immigrants awaiting a judge’s decision would be held in a prison like this.

“Ultimately, this is a for-profit center, so they make more money if the beds are filled,” Knudson said.

Timileyan and David are just two men lucky enough to be granted asylum. In 2016 alone, 240,255 immigrants were deported from the U.S., according to ICE. This number is only likely to increase in the foreseeable future as the Trump administration continues its crackdown on immigration.

— Julian White-Davis is a student at Vashon High School and is the photo

and publishing editor of The Riptide.