Guards at Seattle area detention center hired without background investigations

By Gene Johnson
The Seattle Times

Federal authorities are taking a second look at security guards at the Northwest Detention Center, a privately run immigration lockup in Tacoma, after finding that some were hired without preliminary background checks

"Clearly this is a cause for concern," said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "We take great pride in the safety and the security at our facilities, and we need to make sure the people responsible for the safety and security of our facilities are themselves beyond reproach."

Authorities released few details, citing an ongoing investigation, but a federal charge was filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court, accusing Sylvia Wong, a human relations specialist with GEO Group Inc., the private contractor that runs the center, of lying to ICE internal investigators when she claimed in April she did not falsely generate documents.

The Northwest Detention Center opened in 2004 and holds about 1,000 people accused of immigration violations, mainly detainees from Alaska, Oregon and Washington. This summer, a report by an immigrant rights advocacy group alleged mistreatment of detainees there, including excessive strip searches and overcrowding. ICE officials dismissed it as a "work of fiction."

Guards hired at the center are supposed to go through a preliminary background investigation, after which an "entry on duty" memorandum allows them to begin work pending the completion of a full background check, which can take several months to more than a year, Kice said.

Wong is accused of fabricating the documents, allowing guards to begin work without the preliminary background check. Kice said she couldn't discuss why that allegedly was done, how long it might have been going on or in how many instances guards began working without background checks.

"If someone was brought on board who had a prior criminal history ... that's one of the issues we're examining closely," she said, adding that in such a case "we'll take follow up action."

Wong is still on the job, Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicholas Brown said.

Wong's lawyer was out of the office Tuesday, and Wong did not return a message left on her work voice mail. GEO Group, based in Boca Renton, Fla., did not return e-mails seeking comment.

The study on conditions at the lockup was released by Seattle-based OneAmerica, an immigrant rights advocacy group, and the International Human Rights Clinic at Seattle University Law School. They based it largely on interviews with detainees, family members and immigration lawyers.

"This really just points to what we had in our report, that there's no oversight over these detention centers, and contractors can get away with all kinds of things," Pramila Jayapal, executive director of OneAmerica, said Tuesday.

"We'd like to know what kind of checks were done ... to make sure they don't have guards that might be prone to be abusive," Jayapal added.

The report came out soon after ICE announced an increase of nearly 40 percent in deportations out of Washington, Oregon and Alaska over the first nine months of the fiscal year. More than 7,300 people were deported from the region in that period.

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