Immigration agents pulled roughly 360 people out of the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma over four days last week, loading them onto five charter flights that left Seattle's Boeing Field between Tuesday, Aug. 25, and Friday, Aug. 28 — nearly triple the agency's usual weekly pace. The surge has immigration lawyers wondering whether the destinations, not just the numbers, are the real story: more than half of those flown out landed, at least initially, in El Paso or Kansas City, two cities that sit inside the only federal appeals circuits still letting the government hold immigrants without a bond hearing.
