From the fountained plaza on top of the Museum of Glass, Tacoma looks almost futuristic. Towering abstract sculptures adorn a steel pedestrian overpass. Sleek new trolley cars jangle along a clean, brick promenade. An old train station has been neatly restored to house a federal courthouse. But if you look closely amongst the warehouses, just across the Foss waterway, you might catch a glimpse of a wide, brownish building surrounded in barbed wire.

That's the Northwest Detention Center.

Its a building the federal government uses to house immigrants who are in the process of being deported. Some have been caught by the authorities for being in the country illegally. Others were legal, but now face deportation because of criminal convictions.

I wondered if Tacoma residents even knew the Detention Center was here, in the middle of their city. So I went down to the Museum District to find...
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