Spokane migrant detained by ICE back with family
RANGE caught up with Bismark Avornu, who’s lived in the Spokane area for 15 years, where he met his wife and is raising two American children, about his 45 days in a Tacoma processing facility.
News Story by Aaron Hedge | RANGE
More than anything else, the 45 days Bismark Avornu spent locked in an open room with 80 other people in a private detention facility in Tacoma made him think of the country he left more than a decade ago.
Avornu has two degrees from Eastern Washington University and a wife and two small children who were waiting for him back in Spokane. The facility reminded him of another life entirely: “boarding houses [growing up in Ghana], especially for high schools,” he said, “If you go to a boarding house, it’s an open building with bunk beds in it, top and down, top and down.”
The Tacoma facility is run by the private, for-profit GEO Group on behalf of Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE). Avornu said his time there was militaristically regimented.
”It gave me deja vu,” he said.
RANGE first wrote about Avornu in mid-February, after he was detained by ICE agents at his Spokane home after church on Jan. 26. He’d been in the U.S. for 15 years. His wife Julie Avornu, who returned later to find their home empty, only learned of her husband’s detention later, through a voicemail he left from an unfamiliar phone number.
We originally told Bismark’s story anonymously because, at the time, Julie believed that disclosing their identities would complicate her husband’s legal case.
Now that he’s back home with his family in Spokane pending an October immigration hearing, he wanted to share his experience.
What follows is Avornu’s personal retelling of his time at the detention facility. RANGE spoke with him on March 20, then attempted to verify these details with ICE spokesperson David Yost. Yost did not return our request for information by press time. We will update this story if he replies.
Roundups in B3
Life at the Northwest ICE Processing Center had a rigid structure.
Every day at midnight, 10 a.m., 4:30 p.m. and 10 p.m., guards required Avornu and the others in the room to be in their bunk beds to be counted. They were all seen regularly by doctors and nurses. They ate three meals a day, and if someone refused one, an agent would write a report on them. He said the food was fine, if not the robust African fare he’s used to. He was grateful for the medical care. Avornu was allowed to call his wife from time to time, but other than that, the blessings were few.
His room was designated “B3,” he said. The dozens of people he shared that room with were just a fraction of the roughly 1,500 beds in the facility. At 2 a.m. on Tuesdays, agents would swarm the room and rouse detainees to get on a plane to be deported, Avornu remembered. They never knew who was being deported; everyone just had to be ready to disappear from the states.
”They wake you up and that’s it,” he said. “You don’t come back.”
From there, it’s anyone’s guess.
During his time there, Avornu said a British man was carted inexplicably to an ICE detention facility in Miami. Amanuel Adhanom, an Eritrean man with dual Swedish citizenship, asked if he could be deported to Sweden rather than Eritrea — a volatile country where Adhanom thought he might be killed. They refused, Avornu said.
He also said Adhanom had been arrested in Canada, not the U.S. (RANGE verified Adhanom’s detention at the facility via ICE’s detention tracker, but wasn’t able to verify the location of his arrest.)
Avornu’s arrest happened against the backdrop of a brutal crackdown on migrants in the U.S. — some of whom are here legally — that was a central promise of President Donald Trump’s campaign.
Trump’s immigration enforcement efforts have defied court orders to halt some deportations, used centuries-old laws to hasten deportations, issued deportation quotas to federal agencies, deputized federal agents who do not normally enforce immigration laws to do so, detained American citizens for deportation, sent immigrants to Guantanamo Bay and a work camp in El Salvador, intimidated local organizations that help migrants and skirted sanctuary laws in states like Washington by housing detainees — some arrested in Spokane — in more friendly jurisdictions.
Most other detainees did not have resources to hire lawyers and were tried in groups before being deported. Pro bono lawyers are stretched thin. Avornu said that at one point, he called the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP), which provides free legal services for immigrants, on behalf of a man he befriended in detention. He was met with voicemail asking for the full name, date of birth and country of origin. He gave the information, but NWIRP is so overloaded with cases, he has no way of knowing whether the organization was able to help his friend.
Avornu said he heard stories of other people’s detentions while he was incarcerated by ICE. Some were arrested in department stores while shopping with their families. One man from Portland, Avornu said, received a call from ICE while he was at work; an agent asked him to swing by the ICE office on his way home for ostensibly routine business, but when he arrived, they arrested him, and are now trying to deport him.
“This guy also has a wife and two children,” Avornu said.
He said he understands that immigration has to be managed, but he is perplexed by the way the Trump administration is treating immigrants.
“ It’s a very honest concern for the government — like Trump — to be concerned about immigration within the U.S., but the way they’re approaching it is so brutal and inhumane,” Avornu said. “I don’t get it. The way they are doing it is just too bad. That’s just my opinion.”
At his court hearing, ICE tried to keep him in custody, arguing that he would flee the area if he were released. The judge did not agree, Avornu said, and granted him a $5,000 bond, which his wife Julie paid.
Avornu recounted the judge saying, “Mr. Avornu has no criminal record. He’s never been to jail, not even DUI, never even been pulled over by the police. There’s nothing like that.”
‘I am not out of the woods yet’
As RANGE previously reported, Avornu did have one mark on his record: a deportation order had been issued against him in 2015. Avornu says he never received that order, and had no idea it existed until after he was picked up by ICE.
Now that he’s home, his next step is to convince a judge to remove that almost decade-old order, and to apply for a work permit before Oct. 12, the date of his final immigration hearing.
In all, Avornu says he feels lucky; he had the resources to hire a lawyer, partly through a legal defense fundraiser set up by a friend. (It has raised just over half its $12,500 goal.)
Avornu said that, to his knowledge, he was the only person in ICE custody in Tacoma who was released on bond.
He’s doubly lucky to be home while his case is resolved. Before he told the story of his ordeal, Avornu expressed joy at being back with Julie and their two children, an 8-month-old baby and a 3-year-old toddler. He was also glad to again be attending his Christian church in Spokane, Evangel Vinyard, where he sometimes preaches.
That happiness could be fleeting. “I am not out of the woods yet,” he said. His lawyer keeps reminding him: even though he’s out of detention, ICE is still moving through removal proceedings.
This story was republished from RANGE Media, a worker-owned newsroom in Spokane. Read more of their coverage here.
