On May 19, 2026, La Resistencia, a grassroots group fighting to shut down the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC), received communication from inside the NWDC announcing La Union de Secuestrados por ICE (USI), the Union of People Kidnapped by ICE. The group, USI, was officially formed on April 5, 2026 with official communication coming from Torrence County, New Mexico and Tacoma, Washington.
Over 140 members of the USI from both Torrence County and NWDC signed onto the letter that states they “firmly denounce that the current operations against immigrants are not driven by security concerns… but rather by a system that has turned human suffering into a business.” USI also stated that the detention of immigrants will “go down in history as one of the most shameful chapters this nation has ever faced.”
One of the Union’s leaders, Rogelio Bolofe, who is currently detained at NWDC, stated that the group was created for many reasons, but primarily because “our rights keep being violated by ICE… Its funny to hear how the United States says it’s a country of freedom, but they are not only violating immigrant’s rights, but the rights of all.” The USI states that their demands are: to establish and have their rights respected under the constitution and to have real religious freedom without discrimination.
Advocates at La Resistencia previously supported another collective of detained people, Colectivo de Detenidos at the NWDC, who was awarded a Human Rights award by the City of Seattle in 2018, but has never seen a group that has created connections across state borders and detention facilities.
The USI lists in their official communication threats to democracy that they continue to experience as immigrants in detention. Mr. Bolofe shared with La Resistencia that the Union is “not about an individual case, but a collective.” USI members call on U.S. citizens to “defend democracy… to refuse to be complicit through silence or indifference in the suffering of millions of human beings.”
Read the full communication below:
