Catalina Gaitán / The Seattle Times (TNS) Elian's heart sank when he answered a call last week from the Tacoma immigrant detention center and heard his cousin, Hector, say he was confused, thirsty and afraid. Hector, 21, is nearly deaf, doesn't understand or speak English and experiences intense anxiety around strangers, said Elian, 23. Hector has a developmental disability, knows only minimal Spanish and struggles to speak his native language, K’iche', due to complications from two childhood operations for a cleft palate and cleft lip. Those barriers did not dissuade immigration agents from arresting Hector on Aug. 12 during a raid of his apartment in Oakland. Hector, now detained at the Northwest ICE Detention Center in Tacoma, is unable to understand his own legal proceedings and is isolated from the few people who know how to communicate with him, said Abby Sullivan Engen, a California attorney who spoke to Hector two days after his arrest during a phone call with an interpreter. “He’s incredibly scared,” Sullivan Engen said. “He said, 'My heart hurts.' ” ICE typically used to release some detainees like Hector from custody because of their disabilities or medical conditions, immigrants' rights advocates say. But Hector's case, they say, reflects a growing concern that ICE — to meet the Trump administration’s reported goal of at least 3,000 arrests of undocumented immigrants per day — is detaining people that detention centers' staff lack the expertise or resources to care for. “People are arrested and instead of looking at their individual circumstance, they’re just counted as another number,” said Matt Adams, a spokesperson for the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. “ICE is no longer using common sense in making determinations about who should be locked up.” In an email Monday, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed Hector was arrested during what it called a targeted DEA operation," but did not elaborate further. It's unclear why ICE officers knocked on Hector's door, or if someone gave them permission to come inside, said Sullivan Engen, who is also the co-director of Centro Legal de la Raza, an Oakland-based immigrants’ rights organization. Shesaid Hector and his five housemates lived near, but were not associated with, the people federal agents were targeting that day. Hector was raised in a rural, impoverished village outside of the U.S. with almost no access to medical care, and his developmental disorder — undiagnosed for years — prevented him from learning how to walk, chew and talk until years after most children, his cousin, Elian, and Sullivan Engen said. Sullivan Engen declined to provide Hector's full name or country of origin because his developmental disability prevents him from consenting to release them. But Elian said Hector grew up isolated from and bullied by other children, most of whom had never seen someone with scars from a cleft palate or cleft lip. He struggled to hear and pronounce words, and with no written form of K’iche' or exposure to sign language, communicating with him was almost impossible. Hector eventually learned to talk, mostly in K'iche' and some Spanish, but his speaking and listening ability remain limited. Already extremely anxious around people outside his family, Hector kept to himself, likely to avoid straining to hear people or needing to repeat himself to be understood, Elian said. Hector's life changed when he came to the United States as an unaccompanied teenager and moved into a home in Oakland with five people who became his friends and surrogate caretakers, said Elian, who lives in Oakland but not in Hector's home.Elian and Sullivan Engen declined to say how Hector came to Oakland or found his home there. Hector was working up to seven hours per day at a local restaurant with support from his manager, and his family outside the U.S. relied heavily on his earnings, Sullivan Engen said. When he wasn't at work, he was inside his apartment, where he felt safest, Elian said. But on Aug. 12, Hector awoke to the sounds of ICE officers pushing their way into his home, Elian said. ICE officers transported Hector and at least two of his housemates to the agency’s field office in San Francisco. While his housemates were immediately transferred to the Tacoma detention center, ICE officers held Hector in San Francisco for more than a day, likely because “they understood that Tacoma might not be equipped to take care of him,” but weren’t sure where else to send him, Sullivan Engen said. Representatives for ICE and the Department of Homeland Security did not agree to interviews. In an email Monday, the Department of Homeland Security said Hector “freely admitted to being" an undocumented immigrant and that he “claimed to not have any medical conditions." The agency did not say whether a K'iche' or Spanish interpreter was present during Hector's arrest to help him understand and answer officers' questions about his birthplace, citizenship status or medical condition. "Behind the wall" According to the Department of Homeland Security, all detainees undergo a medical, dental and mental health screening within 12 hours of arriving at an ICE detention center and a "full health assessment" within two weeks. They also have access to medical appointments and 24-hour emergency care. Detainees with disabilities can also request a "reasonable accommodation" from ICE, such as a sign language interpreter, according to the agency's website. "Any claim that there are subprime conditions at ICE detention facilities are false," the DHS email said. Immigrants rights advocates who have researched and documented ongoing concerns at the Tacoma detention center and elsewhere disagreed. A federal judge in California in July ordered ICE officials to provide a sign language interpreter to a deaf detainee, saying the man had a right to understand his own case and communicate, according to a report by nonprofit outlet CalMatters. Though more people are now staying "locked up," the agency doesn’t appear to be increasing staffing or resources to keep up with the growing number and needs of detainees, Adams said. Detention centers across the U.S. are getting crowded, including in Tacoma, which saw its number of detainees nearly double from about 800 early this year to reaching its 1,575-bed capacity in June, according to Adams. “Everyone is suffering down there, but especially someone in (Hector’s) position who is going to be particularly unable to fend for themselves,” Adams said. “They’re bearing the brunt more than others.” Issues like poor food and hygiene and overuse of solitary confinement “have only continued to deteriorate” this year, said Phil Neff, a University of Washington Center for Human Rights researcher who has been studying conditions at the Tacoma facility for nearly a decade. Prisons, jails and detention centers are designed to “routinize and flatten out” what everybody is getting and doing — the "complete opposite approach” needed to care for people with disabilities, who often require individualized medical or mental health treatment, said Rachael Seevers, an attorney for Disability Rights Washington. Detainees who struggle to understand or follow the rules because of a mental health disorder or cognitive disability are also more likely to be placed in solitary confinement, according to Neff and Seevers. Sullivan Engen said she did not know whether Hector has been placed in solitary confinement, but a UW analysis found that Tacoma's detention center holds people longer, on average, in solitary confinement than any other ICE facility in the U.S., and frequently those who are mentally ill. Advocating for people who cannot advocate for themselves is made more difficult because so few outsiders are allowed “behind the wall” to talk to detainees and witness their living conditions, Seevers said. “There are still prison walls between people and the community," she said. "That, in and of itself, is a barrier to people getting effective care." Last Tuesday, an attorney in Tacoma delivered paperwork to the immigration courthouse located inside the ICE facility, documenting Hector’s disabilities and identifying a family member who agreed to take him in should he be released, Sullivan Engen said. Washington immigration attorneys working on Hector’s case also submitted a request that he be assessed for competency, in the hopes that he won't be forced to represent himself, according to Sullivan Engen.Immigration judges are not required to provide attorneysfor immigrants except under specific circumstances, including if the defendant is found to be mentally incompetent. During a Monday immigration court hearing, Hector told a judge his best language was K'iche'. The judge scheduled another hearing for Sept. 24, likely because they must request an interpreter, Sullivan Engen said. It does not appear the judge or ICE officials discussed the competency assessment request or documentation of Hector's disabilities, she said. For Elian, being separated for weeks from Hector with no way to soothe his cousin's fears has left him feeling helpless and heartbroken. "He needs to be with someone who understands him and understands his disabilities," Elian said. "They're arresting innocent people that they shouldn't. Why not look for specific people? Why do they get innocent people that don't deserve it? © 2025 The Seattle Times. Visit www.seattletimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.