SEATTLE — As the Trump administration continues its mass immigrant detention and deportation effort, city and county officials across the Seattle region have approved various bans on new or expanded immigration detention centers.

Washington already houses the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, a jail-like facility privately owned by the Florida-based corporation GEO Group with a contractual capacity of 1,575 beds. As of late March, there is no evidence ICE has plans to open a new detention center in Washington, but that hasn’t stopped local officials from trying to brace for potential expansion plans.

President Donald Trump’s $45 billion push to expand the country’s ICE detention system — including an under-the-radar effort by ICE to buy warehouses and private detention centers — is facing fierce local opposition nationwide. While it remains unclear how the Northwest ICE Processing Center and the Greater Seattle region will fit into the Trump administration’s overall expansion plan, local governments are using the moratoriums as a stopgap.

A “presolicitation” notice for detention services in the Seattle area published by the federal government in December left immigrant advocacy groups and elected officials scrambling for answers and racing to block any possible expansion.

A particular detail that raised questions: The potential contract described in draft documents was for a 1,635-bed facility, 60 more beds than the capacity listed on the most recent contract for the existing detention center. The population there has sharply increased since Trump’s return to office. Just over 1,370 were detained there as of early February, according to ICE data, more than two-thirds of whom had no criminal conviction.

Since February, Renton, Kent, SeaTac, Tukwila, Seattle, King County and Pierce County have all passed moratoriums ranging from six months to a year on the construction of new detention facilities or the expansion of existing ones, largely on the grounds of land-use concerns. Tacoma’s zoning regulations from 2018 already effectively prevent the detention center there from expanding.

“We know that detention centers are sites of serious harm, and any expansion of them will only enable this federal regime to ramp up their inhumane and, in many cases, illegal enforcement actions,” said Seattle Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, who sponsored the city’s bill, at the time.

ICE officials did not respond to requests for comment. A GEO Group spokesperson directed questions to ICE.

Is the ICE detention center expanding?

The Northwest ICE Processing Center is already one of the largest holding spaces in the country for people facing deportation. After the December notice, rumors began swirling about the possibility ICE was looking to double its detention capacity.

A February letter to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security signed by U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Seattle, and other Washington and Oregon lawmakers repeated that concern.

But immigration policy experts and detention researchers say the construction of a brand-new 1,635-bed detention center in the Seattle area is improbable, and that the notice likely referred to services at the existing Tacoma facility.

“Although the population numbers don’t exactly align … there is not another facility in this region that would be closer in size,” said immigration policy expert and former ICE official Claire Trickler-McNulty in an email. “The logical assumption is that it is a new contract for the existing facility.”

The government notice explicitly states the posting includes draft documents and should not be construed as a formal request for contracts. ICE could ultimately seek a contract for services for 1,575 detained people, like under the last contract.

Over the years, people held at the detention center have repeatedly alleged health and human rights violations at the facility, including severe medical neglect, unsanitary food, swamp-like water, the deployment of “chemical agents” against detainees and excessive uses of force.

Three men filed a lawsuit last month alleging they’d been sexually assaulted, beaten and humiliated in the center. A 2025 report found ICE has never sanctioned GEO Group over contract violations despite documented abuses.

Has ICE renewed GEO Group’s contract?

Mystery shrouds the state of the contract between GEO Group and ICE for providing detention services at the Northwest ICE Processing Center.

GEO Group’s most recent deal with ICE was signed in 2015 as a one-year contract with an option to renew each year for nine years. The contract awarded GEO Group a minimum of $700 million over 10 years.

The contract was set to expire in September last year, but whether the contract was extended remains unclear. Immigration advocates and researchers have widely criticized the lack of transparency over the expected contract renewal. Under federal law, ICE is supposed to proactively publish detention center contracts.

“But ever since the previous contract ran out in late September it’s been a total information blackout,” said Angelina Snodgrass Godoy, director of the University of Washington Center for Human Rights, in an email.

A clause in the 2015 contract allows the government to extend the total duration of the contract up to 10 years and six months, and the government can require services to continue an extra six months beyond that, even after the contract expires.

GEO Group may have agreed to extend the contract through March, and could continue providing services at the facility uninterrupted through September, said Leah Montange, a Tacoma-based research associate at Simon Fraser University who studies immigration enforcement and detention systems.

Meanwhile, ICE and GEO Group may be negotiating terms for a new contract, though those conversations, if they’re happening, are not public.

One scenario that could explain the lack of information surrounding a new contract has some immigration advocates particularly concerned: the possibility that ICE is seeking to purchase the Tacoma detention center.

How is Trump expanding ICE detention?

Efforts to slow expansion of ICE detention facilities are set against the backdrop of Trump’s $45 billion plan to vastly increase immigration detention capacity over four years.

The federal government aims to radically reshape its detention system this year, according to an internal ICE planning document released last month by the governor’s office in New Hampshire, where state and local leaders challenged a proposed new ICE facility.

Under the plan, called the “ICE Detention Reengineering Initiative,” ICE would replace its existing patchwork of contracts with jails, prisons and privately run detention centers with a model in which ICE largely uses facilities it owns outright by Nov. 30.

Under the model, ICE would buy and convert warehouses to create eight large-scale detention centers that could hold 7,000 to 10,000 people, and 16 processing centers that would hold between 1,000 to 1,500 people for a shorter period of time.

ICE has already purchased 10 warehouses to convert into processing centers, according to the Baltimore-based group Project Salt Box, which monitors ICE warehouse purchases. In some cases, local officials had no warning immigration officials were seeking a warehouse to build a major detention center in their area until a deal was already inked.

In addition to operating out of converted warehouses, ICE would also purchase 10 “turnkey” facilities — existing buildings under ICE contract to hold detained people.

Some advocates are worried ICE may be eyeing the Northwest ICE Processing Center as one of those.

The Washington Post reported this month it obtained a draft solicitation document in December indicating the Northwest ICE Processing Center was among six GEO Group facilities the agency is considering purchasing. But ICE has not released any information publicly related to buying the detention center.

In response to widespread accusations of mistreatment at the detention center and concerns about the environmental hazards of a residential facility in an industrial area, Tacoma City Council passed zoning laws in 2018 making it virtually impossible for the facility to expand. GEO Group sued over the ordinance and lost.

But if the federal government owns the property, those restrictions could be circumvented, Montange said, and more people could then be detained there.

Leaders in other U.S. cities opposing ICE-owned properties say they have few legal options to block such facilities, citing the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause, which prevents states from directly regulating the federal government. Under ICE ownership, facilities could avoid state oversight.

Some local governments are relying on public pressure to block ICE purchases, or using more unconventional tactics such as restricting water usage.

Will the moratoriums stop expansion?

The moratoriums would not stop ICE from purchasing the Northwest ICE Processing Center. But they would make it harder for GEO Group to increase its detention capacity in the Seattle region.

While the number of beds listed in the December notice may signal a goal to increase the maximum number of people held at the Northwest ICE Processing Center, GEO Group cannot legally renovate its facility to add more beds under Tacoma’s zoning laws.

If GEO Group is pursuing more space nearby to hold people, they could seek to annex a separate facility with infrastructure, such as a warehouse, vacant office building or even potentially an unused motel, Montange said.

The hope is that the moratoriums, at least temporarily, will prevent ICE from securing additional holding spaces in the region, Montange said. But it’s an “untested strategy,” she said.

“People everywhere are trying all kinds of things, trying to figure out, ‘How do we block the expansion?’ ” Montange said. “We’re in uncharted territory here.”

The temporary moratoriums — which generally prevent new land-use applications and permits for detention facilities from being accepted — give city and county staff time to draft up permanent regulations.

Detention researchers and immigration attorneys have not seen any formal contracts to open a new facility. And as of Monday, GEO Group — which has sued in the past over restrictions targeting its facility — has not sued any local governments over the moratoriums.

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—Seattle Times staff writer Nina Shapiro contributed to this report, which includes material from The Seattle Times archives.

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