Tanggol Migrante celebrates release of Ate Michelle

Community group is celebrating freedom for Michelle and renewing calls for the release of Lewelyn Dixon and all those held in the for-profit detention center

TACOMA, WA (May 5, 2025) — After months of community visits and rallying by Tanggol Migrante Network, Michelle, a Filipina green card holder and mother of three, won approval to cancel her deportation at an immigration hearing last week. Tanggol Migrante Network WA (TMN) is a Filipino- and Filipino-American-led community organization fighting for those targeted by the federal administration’s detention and deportation apparatus. ‘Tanggol’ means to protect or defend in Tagalog, and ‘Ate’ is a Tagalog term of endearment and respect.

TMN reports that in February, Michelle was violently detained in California while returning from the Philippines. Due to overcrowding at Bakersfield Detention Center, Ate Michelle was then transferred to the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) in Tacoma, Washington. Tanggol Migrante and other community groups have been advocating for her release ever since.

While detained, Michelle and others have been unable to eat and sleep properly, per TMN. She was denied her medications and access to a doctor, despite being pre-diabetic and having a benign brain tumor which causes her chronic intense pain, hair loss, and rapid weight loss.

Photo: Tanggol Migrante Network

In a rally before the hearing, community called for the release of not but Michelle, but Lewelyn Dixon and all those held in the detention facility. Dixon, or Aunty Lynn, a green card holder and SEIU Local 925 member, remains held at the NWDC pending her own hearing; despite her legal status and 50 years of residency in the United States, Dixon was detained returning to the U.S. from overseas in February.

Aunty Lynn has been held at NWDC since early March. Employed as a lab technician at UW Medicine, her union has been calling on UW to protect Lewelyn’s job and health insurance, to extend these protections to all immigrant employees, and to run trainings for all employees on immigration officials in the workplace and potential risks. Members delivered a petition to the office of the President last week, and ‘Free Lewelyn’ was a common rallying cry at May Day marches in Washington last week.

Photo: The STAND

Beyond release of those detained, many labor and community groups have called for the for-profit detention center to be shut down altogether. NWDC is an ICE facility, but run by GEO Group, a company that saw it’s stock price surge upon news of President Trump’s election. A four billion dollar company, GEO Group is fighting to pay detained people as little as a dollar a day for their work, and those held in the detention center report unlivable conditions. Essential medical care is routinely denied, and multiple people held there have died in the past year. One of those people, Charles Leo Daniel, was held in solitary confinement for more than 800 days.

Ate Michelle’s release renews hope for those calling for the release of Aunty Lynn, and all those held at NWDC subject to dangerous and exploitative living and working conditions.

“Tanggol Migrante would like to welcome Michelle back to the community,” said a member of Tanggol Migrante WA in a statement. “Michelle will be able to sleep in a warm bed and eat a real meal for the first time in months. Most of all, Michelle can be reunited with her daughter. We will continue to fight for all the migrants facing attacks from the Trump administration and be there with them.”