His name was Willem Van Spronsen. He was a 69 year old anarchist and antifascist who successfully destroyed an ICE vehicle with molotov cocktails before being shot dead by four guards.
It was not his first direct action at that concentration camp: last year he was detained after charging the police and successfully de-arresting a young protestor at a rally outside.
The Guardian wrote:A 69-year-old man armed with a rifle threw incendiary devices at an immigration jail in Washington state early on Saturday morning, then was found dead after four police officers arrived and opened fire, authorities said.
A friend of the dead man said she thought he wanted to provoke a fatal conflict, the Seattle Times reported, and described him as an anarchist and anti-fascist.
The Tacoma police department said the officers responded about 4am to the privately run Tacoma Northwest Detention Centre, a Department of Homeland Security detention facility that holds migrants pending deportation proceedings.
The detention centre has also held immigration-seeking parents separated from their children under Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy, an effort meant to deter illegal immigration.
The shooting took place about six hours after a peaceful rally in front of the detention centre, police spokesman Loretta Cool said.
The Pierce county medical examiner’s office identified the man as Willem Van Spronsen of Vashon Island, the Tacoma News-Tribune and the Seattle Times reported.
Police said Van Spronsen caused a vehicle to catch fire and attempted to ignite a large propane tank and set buildings alight. Police said that besides the rifle, he had a satchel and flares.
[...] A friend of Van Spronsen, Deb Bartley, told the Seattle Times she had been a friend for about 20 years. She described Van Spronsen as an anarchist and anti-fascist and said she believed his attack on the detention center was meant to provoke a fatal conflict.
“He was ready to end it,” Bartley said. “I think this was a suicide. But then he was able to kind of do it in a way that spoke to his political beliefs. I know he went down there knowing he was going to die.”
She said she and other friends of Van Spronsen got letters in the mail “just saying goodbye”. He also wrote what she referred to as a manifesto, which she declined to discuss in detail.
Van Spronsen was accused of assaulting a police officer during a protest outside the detention centre, the News-Tribune reported. According to court documents he lunged at the officer who was trying to detain a 17-year-old protester on 26 June 2018.
Van Spronsen pleaded guilty to the charge of obstructing police and was given a deferred sentence in October, the News-Tribune reported.
There are a lot of people out there right now sneering at him. The right are predictably calling him every name under the sun; even many on the left are equivocating and saying "this just makes us look bad" and so on. Well, maybe it's not the smartest tactic or the most effective long-term strategy for change, but at least he was trying. I understand why not everyone agrees but I personally think being willing to go and die doing something,
anything against concentration camps is pretty brave.
