Resource: Ramirez-Martinez v. ICE

Since March 7, 2014, immigration detainees at the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) in Tacoma, Washington have been engaging in hunger strikes to protest the unfairness of national immigration policies and raise awareness about the conditions of their confinement. Their grievances include poor food quantity and nutritional quality, $1 per day wages for work performed at the NWDC, and bond hearings and amounts. On March 27, 2014, ICE placed approximately 20 hunger striking detainees from the same housing unit into solitary confinement in retaliation for their participation in the hunger strikes and interest in discussing their reasons for being on strike with ICE officials. The detainees were kept in isolation cells for 23 hours per day and deprived of meaningful interactions with others. They were not told why they were placed in solitary confinement, nor how long they would have to live in isolation.

On April 2, 2014, the ACLU of Washington and Columbia Legal Services filed a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of three of the detainees placed in solitary confinement on March 27, 2014 seeking declaratory and injunctive relief prohibiting ICE from retaliating against detainees by subjecting them to solitary confinement for engaging in protected expressive activity and seeking a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) for the detainees' immediate release from solitary confinement.