This report is part of a series regarding Human Rights Conditions at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington, based on ongoing research efforts and released to highlight initial findings in the urgent context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Contents: • Introduction • Background, Methodology, and Human Rights Standards • Sanitation of Food and Laundry •

Since the Trump administration’s recent pivot to using military planes in addition to private charter flights to conduct deportation flights, UWCHR researchers have found that between the start of the flights on January 24, 2025, to February 13, 2025, most military deportation flights were by planes stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM) in WA state.

For almost 35 years, different generations of UW students have come together to examine human rights policy at the national and international levels, exploring policy-making processes in Washington, D.C., and formulating individual human rights projects. The UW Bothell Washington, D.C. Human Rights Seminar is a unique experience allowing selected students to spend a week in

Center’s seventh FOIA lawsuit would compel proactive release of three key types of documents on a quarterly basis On November 13, 2024, the University of Washington Center for Human Rights (UWCHR) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), seeking to require

Letter from the Director Dear Friends, I’d like to think of this annual report as something like a time capsule. It recounts the activities our Center for Human Rights conducted in our fifteenth year. Having helmed our center since those early days when our existence was a bit more, shall we say, aspirational than actual,

In 2023–24, UWCHR supported multiple scholars who came to UW after fleeing violence in their home countries. These included Mahir Hazim, who shares his experience as an Afghan legal scholar in the interview below. Mahir Hazim is an acting assistant professor of law at the University of Washington School of Law. Previously he was a

Funds from the Lisa Sable Brown award have supported research for my dissertation, “Nascent Moves: Loss, Desire, and In/Visible LGBTQ Resistances in Bangladesh,” which argues that to understand queerness in postcolonial global south modernities, we need to employ the lens of kotipona. Kotipona is a way of life and refers to being flamboyant and having

On the 35th anniversary of the FENASTRAS bombing, UWCHR revisits case Thirty-five years after the deadly October 31, 1989 bombing at the headquarters of the FENASTRAS union federation in San Salvador, researchers at the University of Washington Center for Human Rights have continued their search for information pertaining to this attack, which has never been

In spring of 2024, Marissa Olivares Morales, recipient of UWCHR’s Benjamin Linder Endowed Fund, joined UWCHR’s Andrea Marcos for an interview exploring her relationship to human rights work, from Nicaragua to Seattle, Washington. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. Andrea: Thank you so much for taking time to talk with us about

This report is part of the University of Washington Center for Human Rights’ Immigrant Rights Observatory project, using public records research and community partnerships to monitor implementation of and compliance with state laws protecting immigrant rights. For more on the project and other publications, visit the project page here. Introduction As the United States enters