By Kari Mar
Publisher, La Conner Community News
Juan Martinez, affectionately known as Conway’s “unofficial mayor,” was detained by ICE on July 30, just 16 days before becoming eligible to apply for a green card after a 25-year wait. He remains today at the Northwest Processing Center in Tacoma.
Reporter Luisa Loi reported on Martinez’s story, and I asked her to see if he would write to us from detention. He did, and with his permission, we are sharing this letter to give readers a glimpse of an American reality that more and more of our friends and neighbors are experiencing.
We only have a few, imperfect comparisons in our nation’s history to this moment; the most often cited is the incarceration of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry during World War II. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan apologized for that injustice with these words: “Here we admit a wrong; here we reaffirm our commitment as a nation to equal justice under the law,” he said.
According to the Deportation Data Project, ICE has booked 610,000 people into custody since January 2025.
We should be troubled by how easily a nation that speaks of liberty can reconcile itself to the confinement and suffering of human beings.
The danger is not simply that fear makes us cruel. It is that we learn to call our cruelty necessary, our indifference reasonable, and the suffering of our neighbors someone else’s problem.
Forty years from now, we may look back on this time with shame, as we do on the incarceration of Japanese Americans. But history will not be able to tell us that we did not know. The people were here. Their suffering was visible. Their voices could be heard.
The question is not whether future generations will recognize the injustice. It is whether we are willing to recognize it while we still have the power to do something about it.
A letter from the Northwest Detention Center
Hello Luisa, I hope you’re all doing well out there.
I am a week away from my release, if it happens, I am feeling many emotions: I have learned to coexist, make good acquaintances, the likes of which I will miss. I will miss them when I no longer find myself in this detention center… despite it not being easy to coexist with so many people at once, I’m trying to be strong and give my personal best…
To make the time pass quickly in my day to day, I try to help those who do not speak English and are new to the detention center — to help them adapt to their new routine.
That’s everything for now, trusting in God that I will be released soon, thank you for your support.
Sincerely,
Juan
Note: This letter, translated from Spanish, was sent from the Northwest Detention Center on Sept. 29. While Martinez is eligible for adjustment of status and was expected to be released on Oct. 8, his detention was extended to Nov. 5 due to an administrative error.
