ICE is transferring people in its custody away from family, lawyers

A group found itself in Alaska, where the prison guards approved them after a man asked for a telephone call.

By Kate Morrissey for Capital & Main

A coastal plane The transport of several dozen people in police custody landed in Alaska in early June.

Several of the men said they had no access to the bathrooms on the plane – or even seats. They stolen in the loading area of ​​the plane.

They had been transferred from the Northwest Ice Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington, to the Correctional Anchorage Complex, an installation led by the State Department of Correctional Services.

“From this moment, I felt dehumanized,” said a man who held a newspaper of experience.

Capital & Main does not identify it or several other people in the care of immigration and customs application due to reprisals.

Transfers of people in police custody between facilities are becoming more and more common as part of the Trump administration. According to a Ice flight monitor report Since human rights, transfer flights from January to August have increased by 43% compared to the same period last year.

“These frequent transfers not only disorient individuals, but also make them more difficult for them to access legal advice and maintain contact with the family,” said the report.

Ice and the Alaska Correctional Services Department did not respond to requests for comments. Geo Group, the private prison company which manages the establishment of Tacoma, postponed to the ice.

Luis Peralta, who was transferred from Miami to Tacoma, told Capital & Main that the officers had not allowed him to bring his personal documents with him when they moved it. This meant that he did not have access to any phone number for family members – his mother had been written on a piece of paper in his personal effects of the installation of Miami.

It also meant that he could not reach the lawyer that his family found for him, he said. Peralta, who has been in the United States since he was a child and was arrested by ice outside his house in Miami, said he hoped to fight to stay in the United States because he has several children here and foresees them.

“I hope we will no longer be transferred,” said Peralta. “Being transferred is like the worst experience that everyone can live.”

He said that during the transfer, officials had not said to the group where the plane was heading until they have been flying for several hours. Each man has received a piece of bread and cheese and a bottle of water like the only subsistence for the whole day, he said.

Their wrists, ankles and sizes were chained together, he said.

“If something works badly in the air, you can’t do anything about it,” he said. “It’s very, very, very scary.”

Another man transferred from Miami said that Ice had transferred him after a judge approved his deposit request so that he can get out of the guard.

“It was like a strategic decision,” said man. “I went to the courts. The judge approved me for a deposit, and literally two days later, I was here. ”

He said that a Tacoma judge refused him the surety.

“I do not see as if it was just for us as human beings to ship us through the country like this,” said man. “I am on the other side of the country far from my family. My family cannot come and visit me. “

When the guards informed the men of one of the housing of the Northwest Ice Processing Center that they were transferred to Alaska, some first refused to go, according to several men from the unit.

A man waiting to be expelled said that an ice officer had seen his name on the list and removed it, with several others, so he stayed in Tacoma. He said that other people sent to Alaska were also waiting for deportation.

“If I wait to be expelled, why would I go to Alaska?” He said. “It makes no sense.”

After many of the men refused to leave the center of Tacoma, officials threatened them with federal criminal accusations, according to several accounts. Then the managers arrived in riot equipment, according to the detainees. Some people used sheets to hold their doors closed, according to the prisoners, while others were looking at, fearing that they were swept away in violence, even if they were not participating.

Before managers of riot equipment entered the unit, people on the list negotiated with ice, according to the detainees.

“They prefer to go there rather than be injured and then leave,” said a man saying other prisoners.

The men sent to Alaska declared that their transfer meant that they spent several weeks in conditions even worse than those they had previously complained to the installation of Tacoma led by Geo Group – conditions that contradict Own ice policies and standards.

“I felt frustrated,” recalls José Alvarez in Spanish with his transfer to Alaska. “I felt helpless.”

Several of the men told Capital & Main that they were not allowed to make phone calls for days, they were therefore unable to inform their families or their lawyers what had happened to them or where they were. According to ICE holding standards, installations are necessary to provide access to the phone to detainees during watch hours.

When, after several days, a man asked for access to his personal effects so that he can get a phone number to make a call, a goalkeeper of the establishment left and returned with other guards who launched grass, according to several men.

“You are completely unable to breathe for two days, and you cough every 10 seconds because all the residues are glued to the walls and on the floor,” recalls a man.

The men were held in overcrowded cells, with a sleeping on a mattress on the ground, they said. In another violation of ICE detention standards, they did not have access to the Court daily, they said.

Related | Even Trump fanboys move away from the atrocities of the ice

The American Union of Civil Liberties of Alaska wrote a letter In the Department of Correctional Services and Alaska ice on the conditions under which men have been held, including the incident involving pepper gas, which the letter calls for “particularly blatant and excessive use of force”.

The letter indicates that the staff of the establishment has not followed the ICE directives which would require consultation with the medical staff before using peppery gas.

“If they had done so, they would have been informed that one of the people they sprayed in pepper were diagnosed with a limited chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and that exposure to such an irritant could be fatal,” wrote Alaska aclu in the letter.

In the letter, the ACLU noted that it had already continued on the conditions of the establishment of the criminal system of the state before the ice moves people in police custody, and he said that several people died in the establishment this year.

“In other words, the ACC is currently not safe Those who are accused or recognized as guilty of crimes“Wrote the ACLU in the letter (the original accent).” And the prisoners of immigrants are entitled to even greater protections. »»

Indeed.

“On June 4, 2025, an immigration and customs agent (” ice “) asked how many prisoners of immigrants The Correctional Anchoration Complex (” ACC “) could host safely for more than 72 hours,” said the letter. “Given the incapacity of AC to meet federal care standards, the answer should have been zero.”

Some men were expelled in Alaska. The rest returned to the Northwest Ice Processing Center after a few weeks in the installation of Alaska.

But as ice transfers continue to increase, detainees do not know how long they could stay there.

“We are not animals,” said Peralta. “Animals are better treated than the way we are treated here.”