Lilly Ana Fowler

Crosscut • 8th February 2021

Left on their own in the PNW, immigrant youth fight ICE together

Unaccompanied youth such as José, who is originally from El Salvador and now lives in the Pacific Northwest, are often housed in youth detention centers scattered across the country and run by the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement. But if no family or sponsor has been found by the time these youth turn 18, ICE transfers them to an adult facility.

Upon turning 18 in May, José ran before he could be transferred to the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tac

Crosscut • 3rd December 2020

New details of a death at Tacoma ICE facility raise questions over care

Bryan Wilcox, deputy field director at ICE's Seattle office, immediately wrote to colleagues, saying: “A heads up that Amar has committed suicide by hanging. He has a pulse, but has no brain activity. This just happened over the past two hours.”

“Of course, no one knows about this yet, just us,” Wilcox wrote, in an email obtained through a FOIA request. A subsequent email noted that though this was “an on-going situation,” ICE was preparing a death notice.

But Amar’s medical condition was comp

Crosscut • 13th November 2020

Will an attack on a Mexican teen change WA hate crime laws?

The vicious attack has left the community reeling. A protest planned for Saturday in Mount Vernon, just south of Burlington, was canceled last minute due to the spike in coronavirus cases. But community members say they intend to press on and don’t understand why the Skagit County prosecutor, Rich Weyrich, has refused to consider hate crime charges or answer questions. Two other protests were held earlier this year.

“Anyone who looked at what happened would see it for what it is,” said Joel Sal

Crosscut • 21st July 2020

Federal agents were sent to Seattle without governor, mayor knowing

But city and state officials and the Seattle Police Department say they had no knowledge that federal law enforcement was in Seattle for Independence Day, with a mission to protect U.S. monuments and buildings.

In an email, Customs and Border Protection said the agency deployed agents to the Henry M. Jackson Federal Building in downtown Seattle in anticipation of the July 4 holiday — the same weekend a driver hit two protesters on Interstate 5, including Summer Taylor who died soon after the hi

Crosscut • 8th April 2020

Risking bodies to pray for souls, priests answer the call amid coronavirus

Strange, a priest in the Archdiocese of Seattle, put on the gown, gloves and face mask meant to protect him from COVID-19. He greeted one of the twin sisters who shared a room at the nursing home. She had tested positive for the virus and was lucky to still be alive. Strange had rushed to the home to perform last rites on her, but it was the other sister, the one only presumed to be positive, who had passed away about 15 minutes before Strange walked through the door.

“I went in to bless the bo

Crosscut • 3rd October 2019

Searching for airports to host deportation flights, ICE gets rejected in Everett and Bellingham

King County leaders, ahead of a report by the University of Washington Center for Human Rights revealing that 34,400 detainees had been deported from Boeing Field from 2010 to 2018, had closed the region’s largest charter airport to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE's detention center in Tacoma housed hundreds of immigrants slated for deportation to Mexico and points south, and managers there needed to make space for hundreds of asylum seekers.

Searching for local governments willing to

Crosscut • 9th April 2019

More immigrants report arrests at WA courthouses, despite outcry

The Washington Defender Association, which has been tracking courthouse arrests, received a report last year from one public defender with two clients who were arrested for driving without a license.

“We believe the Quincy Police Department is profiling our clients and arresting them. ...They take their fingerprints at the jail and then release them. Then they contact ICE and tell them when their court date is, which is when they come pick them up. This is unconfirmed, but based on recent actio

The Atlantic • 23rd October 2016

Why Several Native Americans Are Suing the Mormon Church for Sexual Abuse

Native Americans who were part of a little-known Mormon program from 1947 to the mid-1990s share much of the same story. Year after year, missionaries or other members of the Church of Jesus-Christ of Latter-day Saints approached these families and invited their children into Mormon foster homes. As part of the Mormon Indian Student Placement Program, Native American children would live with Mormon families during the school year, an experience designed to “provide educational, spiritual, social