Category: immigration

City Council, immigration

New Council Committee Shines a Light on Bleak Impacts of Trump Funding Cuts
Kids In Need of Defense managing director Jessica Castellanos

By Erica C. Barnett

As Trump’s funding cuts begin to hit local organizations that rely heavily on federal funds, Seattle officials have said little publicly to indicate they’re prepared for, or more than generally aware of, the deep cuts that are coming for every local organization that relies on federal funding.

With a new revenue forecast showing a dramatic drop in revenues from the JumpStart payroll tax and other funding sources, the city is behaving as if the coming shortfall was the only budget problem they need to prepare to address—ignoring the other side of the ledger, where federally funded programs are at risk for closure.

The council’s most recently elected member, Alexis Mercedes Rinck, said she started thinking last summer about the potential impact a new Trump administration could have locally. “It dawned on me one day that there was a [possible] reality where I won my election and Trump won the election,” Rinck said. “So I spent some time reading through Project 2025 and what the prospects were like for Washington State and they were really grim.”

After Rinck won in a landslide, she decided that the way to pull together all the information that was flooding council offices from organizations and people impacted by the barrage of new federal policies and funding cuts was to set up a committee where the whole council could get briefed, in public, on what was going on. “There’s efficiency, information symmetry, and transparency that I think the committee offers, and there’s so much happening in given day that I do think getting read in is an important starting place to talk about what we are going to do.”

So far, her Select Committee on the Federal Administration and Policy Changes has met twice—once for an overview of Trump policies impacting LGBTQ+ rights, reproductive health care access, and immigrants, and a second time to discuss how tariffs and federal funding cuts will impact housing construction, homeless services, and legal defense for immigrants. Upcoming meetings will cover transportation, emergency management, City Light, and other areas of the budget that stand to lose funds or become far more expensive. The committee, like the council’s other special committees on the comprehensive plan and the families and education levy, includes all nine council members.

During the second half of the most recent meeting, groups that provide legal services to unaccompanied minors talked about the elimination of all federal funding for their programs—including one, Kids In Need of Defense, that is being forced to shut down next month after 22 years.

A “welcoming city” resolution, sponsored by Rinck, would commit the council to include $300,000 in next year’s budget for immigration defense—$150,000 to expand the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs’ [OIRA] existing services, and $150,000 for direct legal assistance, enough to help dozens of people, including minors, avoid deportation.

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If the full $300,000 went just to legal defense, KIND managing director Jessica Castellanos said, it could provide representation for 60 kids.

“We are withdrawing from almost 250 children’s cases, and there’s only 55 of those cases that remain that we are not withdrawing from, and that is because of OIRA’s investment in the representation of unaccompanied children and immigrants in general,” Castellanos said. The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project also provides legal representation to immigrants and receives some of its funding from the city.

Committing in advance to even a small amount of funding could be a challenge in a year when the is facing huge, previously unanticipated budget shortfalls. Councilmember Maritza Rivera called the Trump administration’s action “hateful, irresponsible, disgusting,” but added that the council is going to be facing major budget challenges this year that will require balancing many different interests.

“We all know we have a budget deficit. The county has a budget deficit, the state has a budget deficit. So I think there’s strength in numbers and all of us working together to see what we can do,” Rivera said.

Rinck told PubliCola one of her goals with the committee is to impress on her colleagues the need for more revenue to pay for critical services that will otherwise vanish amid federal cuts.

“I only hope that my colleagues take that seriously— like, taxing the rich isn’t just a slogan, it’s actually the most practical and realistic solution,” Rinck said. “I’m committed to exploring every avenue to make sure the wealthy pay their fair share, and this committee is us taking steps toward us having those conversations.”

So far, council members have been showing up to the committee, which requires a quorum of five members to meet. (The original quorum was three, but Council President Sara Nelson changed it to be consistent with other special committees, which have also had occasional trouble making quorum.) “I’m certainly hopeful that my colleagues see the value that this committee can provide,” Rinck said. “We have a lot of leaders and experts coming it to brief us, and I would be very disappointed if we weren’t able to meet.”

City Council, Elections, gender, immigration, Trump

Tanya Woo Tries Again (UPDATE: Nope); Advocates Tell Council How they Can Help Limit “Existential” Threats from Trump
Her again: Tanya Woo has filed for the city’s public financing program after losing elections in 2023 and 2024.

1. UPDATE As of Monday night, Woo’s name no longer appeared on the city’s campaign website, where it appeared briefly on Monday afternoon, or or on the city’s democracy voucher page.

Tanya Woo is apparently trying a fourth time to get on the city council, after voters rejected her in 2023 (when she lost to Tammy Morales in District 2) and 2024 (when she lost to Alexis Mercedes Rinck for a citywide council seat.) In between those campaigns, the newly elected centrist council appointed her to citywide Position 9, in a direct rebuke to the voters who had just chosen Morales over her.

Woo has not filed for office yet, according to campaign records, but she is listed as a candidate for the position on the city’s Democracy Vouchers website, where she has indicated she will be seeking public funds for her campaign. Candidates for district council seats must collect 150 signatures and campaign donations of at least $10 to qualify.

After winning appointment from her fellow centrists in a pantomime of public process that wasted city time and resources vetting seven candidates who never stood a chance, Woo had an unremarkable 10 months on the council, casting votes in favor of the council’s new law-and-order agenda but proposing no significant legislation of her own, beyond a dead-on-arrival proposal to create special “no-protest zones” around councilmembers’ homes.

Woo also claimed to be the victim of a “xenophobic” hate crime when someone wrote “Tanya Woo hates black people!” and “Fuck Tanya Woo” on the outside of the apartment building her family owns in the Chinatown-International District. During the budget process, Woo opposed Morales’ proposal to study anti-displacement measures for at-risk homeowners as part of the city’s comprehensive plan—saying the proposed environmental impact study (EIS) would “help inform, but not do what we think it’s going to do, based on what I’ve been hearing recently” before asking what an EIS was.

The other candidates who have also filed for Position 2, currently filled by “caretaker” appointee Mark Solomon, are Bruce Harrell transportation advisor Adonis Ducksworth, assistant city attorney Eddie Lin, and real-estate investor Takayo Ederer; all three previously sought appointment to the open seat.

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2. Rinck convened the first meeting of the council’s new Select Committee on Federal Administration and Policy Changes last week, bringing advocates for reproductive rights, the LGBTQ+ community, and immigrants together to discuss the thrriskeats the Trump administration poses to vulnerable people in Seattle.

The threats are well known. Trans people risk losing access to gender-affirming care across the country, and even in Washington state, there are laws on the books that allow forced outing of LGBTQ+ kids and students seeking gender-affirming care.

Health care, similarly, is the line, as Trump threatens to pull  federal Medicaid funding from any provider that offers abortions or gender-affirming care. As Courtney Normand, director of Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates Washington, noted at least week’s meeting. “About 40 percent of all Planned Parenthood patients are Medicaid patients, so [the loss of Medicaid funding] is an existential threat to our ability to be safety-net health care providers at all in Washington and across the country.”

For undocumented immigrants in Seattle, the threat is similarly existential. Although Seattle is a “welcoming city” for immigrants—meaning, primarily, that city employees, including cops, aren’t allowed to inquire about anyone’s immigration status—ICE raids have already hit the city, according to the immigrants’ rights advocates on last week’s panel.

“We received reports of ice appearing in people’s workplaces, including a restaurant in downtown Seattle,” Vanessa Reyes, policy manager for the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network, said. “We’ve gotten reports of people getting deported very quickly after detention, being sent to detentions in other states, and those who have sent to the detention center in Tacoma reporting unsafe and unsanitary conditions.”

In many cases, the solutions, where they exist, are at the state level—through lawsuits by the state Attorney General’s Office, expanded shield laws for people who help others get health care they can’t access in their own states, and laws protecting students at school, including needed revisions to the so-called parental rights bill, a right-wing initiative the state senate passed unanimously last year.

At the city level, though, the advocates who spoke last week proposed changing laws and policies the current city council just put in place, like new live camera surveillance, expansion of automated license plate readers, and the use of police to crack down on people with addiction, men who pay for sex, and people who commit crimes that are often linked to poverty, like shoplifting.

“One thing that’s really going to have a negative impact on our community members are the ways in which people can be subject to mandatory detention without bond, just for having been arrested for a crime such as shoplifting—not even convicted, but just potentially being accused and arrested, Jenny Mashek, directing attorney with the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, said.

Sami Alloy, the interim executive director of Pro-Choice Washington, added that she wanted to see the city “curtailing the surveillance of Seattle residents” by limiting the use of technologies like automatic license plate readers,” which could potentially be used to undermine the state’s shield law.

And Taylor Farley, the executive director of Queer Power Alliance, said, “We need to maintain and strengthen our local tenant protections, not to roll back what we’ve already put in [place].  We’ve put those protections in because they were needed at the time, and they’re still needed and they’re going to be needed for the future.”

The council has called for more policing, more surveillance, and more emphasis on arrests for low-level crimes, including banishment orders that restrict people from going into certain areas of the city even if they haven’t been convicted of a crime. The council is also considering rollbacks to existing tenant protections, including the winter eviction moratorium, maximum late fees, and the “first in time” rule that requires landlords to rent to the first qualified candidate.

Councilmember Cathy Moore, who supported all the policies advocates identified as areas of concern, disputed some of the advocates’ characterizations before asking them about concrete actions the council could take to help fund or advocate for things like gender-affirming care. “We don’t always agree, and I would certainly heartily disagree with some of the representations that have been made, but I’m not going to take this opportunity to go into that,” Moore said.

City Council, Development, homelessness, housing, immigration, Mayor Harrell, Opinion

PubliCola’s Seattle Predictions for 2025

By Erica C. Barnett, Josh Feit, and Sandeep Kaushik

The three co-founders of PubliCola—that’s me, PubliCola columnist Josh Feit, and my Seattle Nice sparring partner Sandeep Kaushik—have put together our annual list policy-obsessed, 100-percent accurate Seattle predictions for 2025. Each of us gave the assignment our own spin—I’m going out on a limb by boldly predicting things that will definitely happen in Seattle next year; Josh is predicting things that shouldn’t happen but will; and Sandeep has a list of things that won’t happen, but should. – ECB

Erica’s Predictions: Things that definitely will happen

Predictions are vibes. By that I mean: Even when they don’t come true, a good prediction captures the zeitgeist of the year, whether or not it’s correct in all the details.

One reason I believe this, probably, is because I’m notoriously terrible at making specific, particularly political predictions. This goes way back, to at least 2003, when I referred to a city council candidate as a “formidable” challenger to the incumbent, Peter Steinbrueck—less than three months before he dropped out of the race because he couldn’t raise any money. (Steinbrueck went on to win with nearly 83 percent of the vote.)

But another reason I think this is because it’s basically true. No, my 2024 prediction that the new council would move quickly to reverse renter protections like the winter eviction ban didn’t pan out—but only because the council wasted months getting up to speed on what the city does, and the repeals got pushed to this year, when they’ll likely happen.

And yes, I was technically wrong when I said the council would find it harder than expected to close a $250 million budget deficit—but only because I didn’t anticipate that council members who campaigned on making “hard choices” would practically trample each other to endorse a cynical short-term fix—using revenues from the dedicated JumpStart payroll tax to fill the entire budget gap.

As for my prediction that the then-new drug law wouldn’t have much of an impact? Well, the city failed to invest adequately in new diversion or treatment programs, so the people who are getting arrested for using drugs in public are still largely ending up back where they started—on corners like 3rd and Pine and 12th and Jackson, where police stage occasional raids that only push people to the next neighborhood over.

So with those caveats out of the way, here’s my list of specific, measurable predictions that will definitely come true in 2025. At least in spirit.

Big picture stuff: 

Federal funding cuts will hit Seattle because of our status as a “sanctuary city,” and we won’t be remotely prepared.

Monday, January 6 marked the first time a council member (Cathy Moore) publicly raised serious concerns about the incoming Trump Administration’s promise to cut federal funding to cities that refuse to participate in mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. But the city has done little to plan for what happens when we no longer have access to federal emergency response dollars (pretty critical during COVID), federal housing funds, which come  in the form of tax credits as well as direct subsidies that make our housing levy pencil out, and federal transportation funds, without which we would have no functioning transit system.

If Seattle really is going to do its part to protect immigrants from racist deportations (and people seeking reproductive and gender-affirming care from prosecution and jail), the time to start planning was last November. But the mayor and council have shown little inclination to discuss what losing funds will mean, much less come up with a plan to deal with this near-inevitability.

The city council will amend the tree ordinance to prevent even more new apartments, all in the name of environmental protection. 

The comprehensive plan isn’t the only policy area where council members are likely to weaponize the city’s environmental goals to prevent new housing in the city’s single-family enclaves. Last year, the city council passed a comprehensive tree protection ordinance that requires property owners to navigate a labyrinth of new restrictions (and pay thousands of dollars) if they want to remove a tree larger than 12 inches in diameter. (We called it byzantine and pointed out that most of Seattle’s tree loss occurs in city parks, not on privately owned lawns). But so-called tree advocates, whose transparent (and often explicit) goal is preventing development in the single-family neighborhoods where they own houses, have argued that these new rules don’t go far enough.

During the council’s first two meetings of 2025, on Monday, Councilmember Cathy Moore accused housing advocates of dismissing trees as a “NIMBY issue” (again, I’ll point readers to the piece I wrote about why the focus on trees in people’s private yards won’t actually protect the city’s tree canopy, while tree planting requirements would), and said she plans to do something to stop the “indiscriminate cutting of trees relating to development” that she claimed is allowed under the current tree law.

Expect a tree code update this year that hews closely to the demands of groups like Don’t Clearcut Seattle, which has misrepresented city regulations to argue for expanded tree requirements for multifamily housing along with dramatic increases in tree removal fees. (They also want to create permanent, legally binding tree covenants for private residential properties). These policies are designed to prevent the housing council members claim they want, but they’ll pass as long as the rest of the neighborhood-based council members go along with Moore and Northeast Seattle Councilmember Maritza Rivera, who has also cited trees as a reason not to allow new housing in her low-density district.

Elected officials will take the wrong lessons from the ongoing uptick in police hiring.

As Sandeep notes below, the Seattle Police Department has started to reverse a trend that began during the 2020 pandemic, when police officers began retiring and quitting en masse, in some cases to avoid COVID vaccine requirements. However, the new hires will not come close to meeting Seattle’s (already scaled-back) version of the nationwide 30 by 30 initiative, which calls for three out of ten new police recruits to be women by 2030. Recruiting women to become officers will turn out to be more complicated than just hiring the former chief of a department that hit that goal; it will require deep changes to a culture of misogyny and actions to remedy past and current gender discrimination in the department.

The city council will continue to take its cues—and legislation—from the mayor, further blurring the gap between the legislative and executive branches.

Although the council did exercise initiative this year by reversing many progressive policies—reinstating special “stay out” zones for drug users and sex workers, expanding the city’s use of jail beds for misdemeanor offenders, and bringing back the old prostitution loitering law, to name a few—much of the legislation they passed this year came prewritten from the mayor’s office, from legislation to increase the city’s control over the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, to a proposal to remove restrictions on SPD’s use of “less lethal weapons” for crowd control.

Hell, the entire 2025 budget radically shifted the way the city funds general government services, and no one protested except Tammy Morales, who cited bullying by her colleagues as the reason she resigned last year. Sure, individual council members will occasionally butt heads with specific  departments (for Rob Saka, that’s SDOT; for Moore and Maritza Rivera, the city’s planning and land use departments), but they won’t oppose the mayor who helped most of them get elected.

Even major appointments now play out like faits accomplis: Harrell chose Madison, Wisconsin police chief Shon Barnes as the city’s new police chief without any public process or even a list of finalists. It’s hard to overstate what a break this is from longstanding practice; I went back 25 years, to the appointment of Gil Kerlikowske, and could find no examples in which a mayor appointed a permanent police chief without publicly vetting multiple candidates.

The council would be wise to question Harrell’s judgment when it comes to police chiefs. Just last year, Harrell defended disgraced former police chief Adrian Diaz as a “fine leader” whose “integrity is above reproach.” (Diaz, who was facing allegations that he had sexually harassed and discriminated against his female subordinates, announced he was gay on a right-wing talk show the following day. Seven months later, Harrell fired him for having, and lying about, an inappropriate relationship with a woman he hired.)

But they won’t. The head of the city council’s public safety committee, Bob Kettle, has already offered Barnes a “warm welcome” to his new job in a Harrell press release, and the council will almost certainly follow suit, approving the mayor’s pick after a perfunctory hearing process.

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And some quick hits: 

Despite near-unanimous support from the council she helped get elected, Sara Nelson will face a serious reelection challenger and could lose her seat.

Despite a lackluster first term (see Sandeep’s predictions, below), Mayor Bruce Harrell will not face a serious challenger and will win reelection, after a shakeup that involves the appointment of two, if not three, new deputy mayors.

Despite the city council’s successful push to place the social housing funding measure, I-137, into a low-turnout February election slot (more on that underhanded effort here), the proposal will pass, because the concept is broadly popular.

Despite overwhelming public support for turning Pike Place Market into a pedestrian-only zone, the streets around the Market will still be choked with cars at the end of 2025.

Rob Saka will still have to look at his nemesis—that fucking curb!—every time he drives to or from his downtown office, as SDOT finds reasons not to spend $2 million removing it.

Continue reading “PubliCola’s Seattle Predictions for 2025” →

Guest Contributor, immigration, King County

Beyond the Border: Addressing the Asylum Seeker Surge in Our Own Backyard

By Palmira Figueroa and Ben Maritz

It was one of Pedro’s sons who gave him the idea. A friend of his made the trip earlier that year and experienced no issues getting across the border, posting about the entire journey on TikTok. Pedro, an asylum-seeker from Venezuela, had been living in Colombia with his family of six for the past three years, doing odd jobs when he could find them, and decided to set out for a better life in the north.

Salvador, an Angolan from the embattled exclave of Kabinda, had been bouncing around various African countries, unable to return home. He learned from a friend that it was possible to buy a cheap ticket to Brazil, a country which doesn’t require a visa for entry. Once in São Paulo, he joined the stream of migrants from every part of the world heading to the United States for safety and economic opportunity.

A lot has been written about Texas paying for buses to send migrants to New York and Chicago, but the federal government itself is also paying for people to travel away from overwhelmed shelters near the border—a policy that has impacts in unexpected places, like Seattle.

Pedro and Salvador both recently passed through an informal asylum-seeker encampment at the Riverton Park Church in Tukwila, a community-run facility that is now overwhelmed. Every week, 30 to 50 new asylum-seekers arrive, most with young children. The federal government has policies in place that allow people to cross our border, but has provided no resources to help provide them resettle. The church is woefully overcrowded and the vulnerable people staying there are getting desperate.

How we got here

Today, most people who reach the border seeking asylum—about 2.3 million a year—are processed and released, especially those who are traveling with children. They are assigned the next available court date, which the most recent arrivals have told us is currently sometime in 2029. Federal law makes asylum-seekers eligible to work six to eight months after they apply for asylum; in the meantime, they receive no assistance or accommodation.

Three-quarters of the migrants are from places further afield than Mexico, including South America and Africa. Some people cross 20 countries before they arrive in the United States. Because the migrant facilities at the southern border are completely overwhelmed, authorities are encouraging migrants to travel to other places within the United States, ideally where people have access to family or other resources. A lot has been written about Texas paying for buses to send migrants to New York and Chicago, but the federal government itself is also paying for people to travel away from overwhelmed shelters near the border—a policy that has impacts in unexpected places, like Seattle.

The local crisis

Both Salvador and Pedro passed through shelters near the border that had no capacity to accommodate them, and so paid for them to travel to Seattle—Salvador by plane, and Pedro and his family by bus. They arrived at the church just like the dozens that are still arriving each week – disoriented, penniless, and full of hope.

The Riverton Church, under the leadership of Pastor Jan Bolerjack, has long played a leading role in caring for our most disadvantaged neighbors. It was the site of a sanctioned homeless encampment until early 2023, when the Low Income Housing Institute built a tiny house village on the site. Seattle police officers and other law enforcement agents had been referring people to the Riverton Shelter ever since the first migrants started showing up in Seattle about a year ago. The officers knew Pastor Jan would welcome them.

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Today the church is a buzz of languages and chaos, with hundreds of people from around the world overflowing its fellowship hall, sanctuary, parking lot, and green spaces. It’s wet, muddy, and cold, but smiles abound and a spirit of optimism is palpable. Children play, families cook and sing, teens gossip. After a harrowing journey across South and Central America, the American dream is palpably just around the corner.

The people at the church, like those at similar overflowing facilities around the country, are here to seek safety and happiness. They are ready to learn, work and to fully take part in our society. But they still face tremendous short-term obstacles and have essentially no resources available to help them. Most are from countries without families or established communities in the region and so don’t have a natural network to turn to. Unlike refugees, a different category of migrants, they are not eligible for federal assistance.

The asylum-seekers in Tukwila and elsewhere need help filing their immigration cases. They need English language training. They need jobs. But most of all, in the immediate term, they need housing and basic sanitation so they can restart their lives.

What’s Needed

In December, King County allocated $3 million to rent 100 rooms in a hotel in SeaTac through June for some of the most vulnerable asylum-seekers. This is a costly, partial, and temporary solution. During our most recent cold weather emergency, many families living outside the church were moved to hotels by volunteers who used their own funds, but only for a few days.

What is needed is a permanent resettlement center which can welcome the migrants and be a base from which local and state governments can provide assistance. Since there is no end in sight to the flow of migrants, this facility and its funding must be open-ended, not time-bound. It should be located near transit, services and amenities such as schools for the many children in the community.

This group of people is very different from other homeless community members who are living unsheltered. While they certainly carry their share of trauma, they do not generally suffer from the issues that our urban unsheltered community goes through. They are ready, able, and eager to work and grow in their new community. A small amount of targeted assistance will get most asylum seekers into a place where they have work permits, a job, and stable housing.

We are calling on our local, county, and state government to step in and do what the federal government has failed to do: Care for the asylum-seekers and help them become a part of our community while they wait for their asylum cases to be adjudicated. Concerned citizens should write to their elected officials (a list of state local officials can be found on the new VoteWA Voter Portal) and let them know that helping this worthy group of new Americans should be a priority.

What is needed is a permanent resettlement center which can welcome the migrants and be a base from which local and state governments can provide assistance. Since there is no end in sight to the flow of migrants, this facility and its funding must be open-ended, not time-bound. It should be located near transit, services and amenities such as schools for the many children in the community.

Today, Salvador is living in the county-funded hotel and working as a translator and community organizer among the asylum seekers; he’s also enrolled at Seattle Central College, working toward his GED. Pedro and his sons are working in construction and building toward a life of independence in their new country.

Meanwhile, in December 2023, the most recent month for which data is available, 302,034 people were processed at the southern border, an annualized rate of 3.6 million and an increase of roughly 50 percent increase over the record-breaking rate of the most recent fiscal year.

Washington has long taken pride at being a Sanctuary State and rejecting xenophobic, anti-immigrant sentiment. Now is the time to invest in welcoming and embracing our new neighbors and letting them join our community with dignity.

Palmira Figueroa is an immigrant, a community organizer and long-time immigrant rights advocate. Ben Maritz is an affordable housing developer based in Seattle.

Courts, criminal justice, Drugs, immigration, legislature, Uncategorized

New State Drug Laws May End Some Deportation Proceedings, But Risks Remain
King County Detention Center, Seattle (Photo: PubliCola)

By Paul Kiefer

When the Washington State Supreme Court ruled in February that the state’s harsh drug possession laws were unconstitutional, most lawmakers, prosecutors and defense attorneys hurried to prepare for the ruling’s vast consequences for the state’s court system and the tens of thousands of people whose convictions for drug possession are now baseless.

Among those impacted by the ruling, State of Washington v. Blake, are immigrants convicted for simple drug possession under Washington’s pre-Blake drug laws. Some are currently facing deportation because of a drug possession conviction; others have already been deported.

Ann Benson, the Directing Attorney of the Washington Defender Association’s Immigration Project, says immigrant rights groups around the state are still trying to tally the number of immigrants who could be impacted by the Blake decision; her office estimates that at least 75 people in Washington Department of Corrections custody fall into that category, in addition to the hundreds of other immigrants with drug possession convictions who aren’t currently incarcerated and those who have already been deported for drug possession.

The Blake decision is most consequential for green card holders, for whom a criminal conviction can either create an obstacle to government services—federal student loans, for example—or trigger deportation,

For those immigrants, the Blake decision has eliminated the federal government’s justification for their deportations, providing a source of hope for those who have been separated from their families during deportation proceedings—and potentially for those who have already been deported.

But a newly passed law that partially re-criminalizes drug possession dampens the implications of Blake for the future of immigration enforcement in Washington.

The Blake decision is most consequential for green card holders, for whom a criminal conviction can either create an obstacle to government services—federal student loans, for example—or trigger deportation, depending on the charge. Because the state supreme court’s ruling nullifies past drug possession convictions, some green card holders with criminal records now have a chance to avoid some of those consequences. Those facing deportation for a drug possession conviction can now file a motion in a county criminal court to vacate their conviction; without a conviction, ICE can’t move forward with their deportation.

Tim Warden-Hertz, the managing attorney with Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, said the pace at which immigration courts respond to Blake will depend on ICE, whose attorneys serve as prosecutors in deportation cases. “ICE has the discretion to be proactive,” he said. “They can move on their own to reopen cases—and, for that matter, to terminate cases.” An ICE spokesperson did not answer PubliCola’s questions, including about whether their attorneys plan to end deportation proceedings unilaterally.

Warden-Hertz added that, thanks to Blake, former green card holders deported for drug possession convictions might be able to return to Washington once a court vacates their conviction. “If we can reopen their cases,” he said, “then the client regains their green card, which means they regain their lawful permanent resident status and should be able to travel back to the United States.” Thus far, he said, his legal team have only identified one client who may be able to reclaim their green card. Continue reading “New State Drug Laws May End Some Deportation Proceedings, But Risks Remain” →

Equity, immigration, legislature

Democrats in Olympia Pass Progressive Tax Credit for Low-Income Residents

Rep. My-Linh Thai (D-41, Bellevue), sponsor of Working Families Tax Exemption bill. Image via House Democrats.

by Leo Brine

Democrats continue to advance a slew of progressive bills this legislative session aimed, they say, at making Washington more equitable. While last week’s headlines dramatized the news that Senate Democrats passed a capital gains tax, a longstanding progressive agenda item,  House Democrats were busy ushering through a major lefty item as well, the Working Families Tax Exemption bill (WFTE). Like the capital gains tax, the WFTE legislation would alleviate the pressure the state’s regressive tax system puts on low-income Washingtonians. In this instance: by giving roughly 500,000 of Washington’s lowest-income residents a tax rebate ranging from $500 to $950.

Both bills are longstanding items on the progressive wish list. The WFTE has existed as a state-level benefit program since 2008, but it was never funded because of the recession that hit late that year. The successful House vote this past Tuesday, March 9,  backed the bill for the first time with dollars from the general fund. That money will be allocated when the house rolls out its budget later this month. The Department of Revenue estimates the program will cost roughly $18 million to administer during the 2021-2023 biennium and pay out $250 million to about 420,000 residents, according to a fiscal note from the Department of Revenue.

“There’s been a large effort from the community to show lawmakers how regressive our tax system is,” said Andy Nicholas, senior fellow at the Washington State Budget and Policy Center. Nicholas says awareness of how regressive Washington’s tax system is has grown over time and now politicians understand the effects of regressive taxes on many of Washington’s underserved communities.

Thai was elected to represent the 41 district in 2018 and became the first refugee in Washington’s history to serve in the house of representatives.

Rep. My-Linh Thai (D-41, Bellevue), the sponsor of the WFTE legislation, represents a former Republican stronghold that gradually shifted to swing turf in the 2000s, before eventually turning blue in the late 2010s.

Bellevue’s population continues to grow more diverse. According to the 2000 U.S. census, Bellevue was a largely white community: 74 percent of the city’s residents were white, with Asian Americans, the second-largest group, making up 17 percent of the population. As of 2018, however, Bellevue is 35 percent Asian Americans and white residents make up 49 percent of the population. Bellevue also has a large immigrant population, with 38 percent of the city’s residents being foreign-born.

Continue reading “Democrats in Olympia Pass Progressive Tax Credit for Low-Income Residents” →