ICE Is Thwarting Sanctuary City Policies In King County: UW Study

SEATTLE, WA - Immigration and Customs Enforcement is arresting plenty of immigrants in King County, despite sanctuary policies in effect at the county level and in local cities.

That's according to new research from the University of Washington showing that ICE officers made about 60 percent of immigrant arrests over the last four years "at large" — meaning on the streets in local communities.

In King County and cities like Seattle and Kirkland, local police do not inquire about a person's immigration status during an arrest. And the King County Jail, in general, does not comply with ICE immigration detainer requests — which would mean transferring undocumented immigrants into ICE custody after they are released from the jail.

King County requires ICE to get a judicial warrant to make arrests at the jail. Detainer requests are administrative, meaning they are issued not by a judge, buy by ICE itself.

"This suggests that while 'sanctuary' policies restricting ICE access to jails work, ICE adapts by carrying out more arrests in the community," UW Center for Human Rights researchers Marí Ramirez and Francisca Gómez Baeza wrote. The research was done using data obtained by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Clearinghouse.

The research showed that about half of ICE arrests in Washington happen with the assistance of local jails. Pierce County, for example, regularly notifies ICE when undocumented immigrants leave the jail. In Grant County, almost 94 percent of ICE arrests were made at a jail.

ICE officers made 3,431 arrests in King County between October 2014 and May 2018. Only 16.6 percent of those arrests were made at the King County Jail, the lowest jail-to-ICE rate in the state.

Caption: Foreign nationals were arrested the week of Feb. 9, 2017,during a targeted enforcement operation conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) aimed at immigration fugitives, re-entrants and at-large criminal aliens.

Photo by Bryan Cox/U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement via Getty Images