The Seattle Times | September 18, 2026
Outside the immigrant detention center in Tacoma on Wednesday, Humphrey Oyoo was trying to find his pregnant wife.
Cece Mokua, 29, had been detained the day before, while going to what was supposed to be an interview for her asylum application with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — an agency that under past administrations was not involved with immigration enforcement and instead focused on adjudicating applications for legal status.
Instead, Mokua found herself dealing with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, who separated her from Oyoo and their 1-year-old, kept her for hours in a holding cell and took her to the Northwest ICE Processing Center.
But when Oyoo tried to leave a message for his wife Wednesday at the front desk of the Tacoma detention center, he was told she had been released. But had she really? Or was she being transferred to another ICE facility out of state? That has been happening to hundreds of people recently, and they too had usually been listed in the detention center’s system as “released.”
The front-desk officer couldn’t tell him.
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After Mokua’s arrest, SEIU 775 expressed concern about ICE enforcement against healthcare workers. Mokua does not work in healthcare, but her husband is a home healthcare aide and SEIU union member in Spokane, where the couple lives. He also runs an adult family home for seniors and others who can’t live on their own.
“We are already facing a shortage of caregivers as the population ages, and attacking immigrants will only deepen that shortage and make it harder for residents to get the care they need,” the union said in a statement.