On March 27, hundreds of community members and unionized workers rallied outside of the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington, demanding the immediate release of Lewelyn Dixon and Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez Zeferino, who were recently arrested and are being detained by U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
The demonstration, which was organized by multiple labor and community organizations, including the Washington State Labor Council, (affiliated with the AFL-CIO) featured speakers who personally know Dixon and Juarez.
Unprecedented attacks on immigrants and organizers in Washington state
Dixon, a lab technician at the University of Washington and member of the Service Employees International Union Local 925, is a long time green card holder who immigrated to the United States nearly 50 years ago. Dixon has been in detention since February, when she was arrested by ICE while returning from the Philippines. Her hearing is scheduled in July, which would mark nearly five months since her arrest. Dixon’s family members, who have not been given a reason for her detention, believe that she is being held due to a nonviolent embezzlement conviction in 2000, even though Dixon completed paying restitution for the charge in 2019, and has renewed her green card twice and traveled internationally multiple times since the conviction. Dixon’s detainment raises legal questions, as it appears to reflect a reinterpretation of the law by the Trump administration to severely punish immigrants, even permanent residents, for infractions that have long been considered inconsequential to immigration.
Juarez is a farmworker and well-known union organizer with Familias Unidas por la Justicia, which he helped found, and a volunteer with Community to Community Development, both of which advocate for improved conditions for farmworkers, especially immigrant and Indigenous laborers. Juarez was recognized for his work on behalf of these communities with the 2023 Whatcom County’s Dotty Dale Youth Peacemaker Award. On March 25, while dropping his partner off at work, Juarez was violently detained by ICE officers, who broke his car’s windows and forcefully removed him from the car. Community members believe that Juarez was targeted in retaliation for his organizing and activism.
The Trump administration’s broader agenda
Labor leaders who spoke at the demonstration highlighted the role of immigrant rights organizations like La Resistencia in protecting immigrants from state violence. They also stressed that Dixon’s and Juarez’s detentions are but two high-profile instances of the Trump administration’s attacks on immigration, organized labor and working class resistance more generally.
Shaunie Wheeler James, Martin Luther King County Labor Council Deputy Executive Secretary, said in a speech: “The federal government is targeting union activists, community leaders. They want to break our movement and they want to make us afraid.”
Cherika Carter, WSLC Secretary Treasurer, commented that the arrests were due to “a system that punishes us for raising our voices… that fears organized people more than it fears injustice” and that is “designed to protect corporate power, to suppress dissent, and to keep working people fighting each other instead of fighting back.”
In an interview with Liberation News, UAW Local 4121 President Levin Kim said, “It’s not a mistake that [the administration] is targeting workers, especially immigrant workers… Immigrants and workers and the labor organizations have always had power in numbers.” Kim added that the administration and the billionaire class want to “fund tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy at the cost of… everyday working Americans, at the cost of our healthcare, at the cost of the future that we want to build as workers.”
Stand up, fight back!
Attendees responded to the speakers and program with enthusiasm. Prompted by MC Dulce Gutiérrez, WSLC’s Union, Community, and Naturalization Organizer, demonstrators demanded that the NWDC, which has been the site of numerous human rights abuses, be shut down, and that all detainees at the NWDC be freed. Consistent throughout the program was the collective will of attendees, organizers, and speakers to fight back against Trump’s billionaire agenda on all fronts.
Dale Siewert, a co-worker of Dixon’s and fellow member of SEIU 925, asserted in an interview with Liberation News that workers “are not scared… We will not back down, we will stand up, [and] we will fight back,” and that workers “will come for” employers that refuse to defend their workers against the administration. This fighting tone was echoed by the speakers. Said Kim in a speech, “We have the responsibility to meet this moment, [to] build a movement that can center and uplift the leadership of immigrant workers that are getting organized, that are getting agitated, that are getting in the streets, and are getting ready to fight back.”
