A “no trespassing” sign outside of Northwest ICE Processing Center. (Grace Deng/Washington State Standard)
Attorneys for a former Armenian refugee held in the federal immigrant detention center in Tacoma say he has been unable to get medical treatment for months, leaving his family worried he could soon die.
Oganes Doganyan’s lawyers have petitioned a federal judge for his release from the Northwest ICE Processing Center so he could get treatment for a rare disorder that has caused excessive bleeding.
This is the latest in a monthslong effort to get care for Doganyan, 52.
“This is an individual who is going to die,” said his attorney Greg Russell. “It’s only a matter of time.”
Allegations about lack of access to medical care have been rampant in the private detention center for years. And the center’s critics have worried about worsening conditions as the Trump administration ramps up deportations nationwide.
The Tacoma facility is one of the biggest in the country, with 1,575 beds. The facility houses both detained locals as well as people taken into custody in other states before deportation, like Doganyan.
Immediately after President Donald Trump took office, weekly flights through Boeing Field to the detention center spiked in size, carrying 90 or 100 detainees each week. Last week, just two people got off the plane for detention, according to the advocacy group La Resistencia which monitors the flights.
Last Tuesday, no one was flown into the facility, a possible signal of the population constraints at the for-profit center operated by The Geo Group. GEO last week announced a roughly $1 billion, 15-year contract with the federal government to provide additional space for detained immigrants at a 1,000-bed facility in New Jersey.
Before 2020, the Tacoma facility was often near capacity, but that plummeted to just a few hundred people during the pandemic. In recent years, the number of people held at the site has stabilized but was still far below 1,000.
As of last week, over 1,350 people were detained there, said Matt Adams, the legal director for the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project.
“It is clear that they will be going back to filling up the beds in their effort to make a statement,” Adams said in an email.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in recent weeks have publicized several strings of arrests in Washington.
Yearslong concerns about conditions at the detention center have resulted in calls for state inspections and increased regulation, leading to legal back-and-forths still playing out in court.
In March 2024, Charles Leo Daniel, 61, died there after years in solitary confinement. The Pierce County Medical Examiner later said Daniel died of natural causes. Still, the incident led to calls for a federal audit of health care services at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities.
In October, Jose Manuel Sanchez-Castro, was experiencing fentanyl withdrawal when he died in the detention center.
Maru Mora Villalpando, the founder of La Resistencia, said a pregnant woman in the detention center also hasn’t been getting medical care recently.
Doganyan’s medical concerns, meanwhile, trace back to before Trump took office last month.
Race against time
Doganyan has been held in the detention center since August, his lawyers said.
He’s been in the country since arriving as an 18-year-old refugee from the former Soviet Union with his family in 1990. For years, he lived in southern California as a lawful permanent resident.
He got in trouble with the law in 2018 over allegations of health care fraud, threatening his green card. He is set for a hearing to decide on deportation in early April, according to his lawyers. They worry he won’t be alive by then.
“That’s in god’s hands,” said one of Doganyan’s other lawyers, Judy Wood.
Because Doganyan was born in the former Soviet Union, he isn’t an Armenian citizen, leaving him stateless.
Doganyan has several medical issues, including Type 2 diabetes and a rare blood clotting disorder called Factor II deficiency, which is caused by a lack of protein in the blood. Because of the disorder, medical staff at the detention center said they couldn’t obtain bloodwork or treat him out of fear it would cause excessive bleeding, according to his habeas corpus petition filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle.
An ICE spokesperson declined to comment, citing a private health matter and the ongoing litigation.
In late November, Doganyan’s lawyers filed a request for humanitarian parole with the federal Department of Homeland Security. The department hasn’t responded to that request, Russell said.
“My perspective is they’re not going to listen to any legal arguments,” Russell said. “They’re not going to listen to due process and the constitutional issues. They’re just going to do what they want to do.”
Doganyan is now asking to be either transferred or released with supervision via ankle monitor so he can get medical care. But Russell cautioned it could be months before a judge takes up his petition.
Doganyan’s mother, wife and children are U.S. citizens.
“The family asked me, ‘What happens if he dies?’” Russell said. “All you can do is maybe sue them, but that’s not going to bring him back.”
Medical care standards
ICE’s standards for medical care state “a detainee who requires close, chronic or convalescent medical supervision shall be treated in accordance with a written treatment plan conforming to accepted medical practices for the condition in question, approved by a licensed physician.”
They also allow for transfers to other facilities if the detention center doesn’t have the resources to care for someone.
Doganyan’s lawyers say ICE is clearly not following these standards in the Tacoma detention center. Their petition argues his “continued detention is not constitutional because it constitutes unfair and inhumane treatment as well as cruel and unusual punishment.”
Doganyan calls his lawyers often. He’s been depressed and frustrated that the country where he’s lived for over 30 years isn’t caring for him.
“As Americans, we come to expect … that the government will treat us with basic decency,” Russell said. “That’s not being done here.”
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.