Cute Letter, Bob. Now Actually Stop Collaborating With ICE To Disappear Washingtonians

Gov. Bob Ferguson really thought he did something when he sent a letter vaguely committing to defend Washington’s law preventing State and local actors from collaborating with the feds to disappear Washingtonian immigrants. But he’s only a fighter against Trump’s deportation agenda if we’re counting WWE performers. While the exchange may make Ferguson look like Trump’s political foil, he’s actually perfectly happy to help Trump carry out his agenda by allowing ICE to kidnap our neighbors after they finish their prison sentences. 

Earlier this month, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to jurisdictions the Trump administration identified as “sanctuary” jurisdictions. The letter threatened to withhold federal funding and even prosecute elected officials if they do not agree to allow local authorities to facilitate Trump’s mass deportation agenda. 

Bondi wrote, “For too long, so-called sanctuary jurisdiction policies have undermined this necessary cooperation and obstructed federal immigration enforcement, giving aliens cover to perpetrate crimes in our communities and evade the immigration consequences that federal law requires.” 

While neither Bondi nor Ferguson name it in their back-and-forth, Bondi appears to be calling for an end to the 2019 Keep Washington Working (KWW) Act, which limits local law enforcement and government agencies ability to collaborate with federal immigration enforcement.

Ferguson swatted back last week, telling Bondi and the Trump team that the State of Washington will not be “bullied” into retracting sanctuary policies. 

Ferguson wrote, “You seem to believe that cavalierly citing criminal statutes and personally threatening me, a democratically elected governor, will result in compromising the values of my state.”

Line break for dramatic effect. 

“Never,” his response letter read.

Don’t get me wrong, Ferguson should take every opportunity to eviscerate the Trump administration in public letters. But this letter makes Ferguson look a little cooler than he is. 

Between Trump’s inauguration and June 26, ICE has arrested an average of five Washingtonians a day for a total of 782 people as reported by the Washington State Standard. That is a 35% increase compared to the same time period in 2024. And that’s with the “sanctuary” policies intact. 

For all of Bondi’s bluster about how Washington’s KWW law is shielding immigrants, the law does not stop all collaboration. The Seattle Police Department might not literally load people into vans, but they have guarded the people who do. The Tukwila Police Department went so far as to gas protesters who dared to block ICE from leaving with detainees. On top of that, lawmakers wrote in a major loophole in KWW, which allows the Department of Corrections (DOC) to cooperate with ICE. This allows state employees to inform ICE of an incarcerated person’s release date, giving ICE a heads up to capture recently freed Washingtonians and add even more punishment after they have already served their sentences. Advocates refer to this as the DOC-to-ICE pipeline. 

According to recent reporting from the Washington State Standard, ICE snatched 51 out of 61 people released from prison with outstanding detainers this year. ICE took 101 people out of 128 exiting prison with a detainer in 2024.

Failure to close this pipeline helped Trump carry out one his first experiments in so-called “third country deportation,” AKA trafficking immigrants to countries they have no connection to. ICE scooped up Tacoma-raised Vietnamese refugee Tuan Thanh Phan immediately after his release from his 25 year prison sentence earlier this year. The Trump administration tried to send him and several other immigrant men with criminal records to South Sudan, but rerouted them to a U.S. military base in Djibouti while they fought in the courts for the authority to kidnap immigrants and ship them to countries they do not know. 

A movement led by AAPI, refugee, and immigrant communities in Washington demanded that Ferguson pardon Phan, a move that would not erase the 25 years he spent repaying his debt to society, but would save him from Trump’s trafficking. Ferguson declined to pardon Phan, essentially allowing the Trump administration to have their way with him. 

That movement to bring Phan home also demanded Ferguson eliminate the carve out that allows DOC to coordinate with ICE. In a February news conference, Ferguson said he won’t strengthen KWW: “I will not do that. My direction is that the Department of Corrections continue to lawfully work with federal immigration authorities regarding those individuals.” 

Ferguson reaffirmed that position last week. 

It's not totally shocking. His predecessor, Democrat Gov. Jay Inslee also ignored the immigrant community in 2021 when more than 60 community organizations sent him a demand letter to stop DOC’s collaboration with ICE. And that was when the Democrats faced no threats from the federal government. 

In this way, governing at the same time as Trump might as well be a centrist Democrat’s wet dream. You can hold packed press conferences, dictate a breathless news cycle, live out your comic book hero fantasy for doing the bold, the unthinkable, and conserving the status quo. 

Giving Ferguson flowers for so little helps him seed the narrative that he’s some sort of progressive champion, a narrative that gave him cover when he hopped from the Attorney General’s office to the Governor’s mansion. If electeds, the media, and the public are not critical about how Ferguson uses Trump’s unpopularity to improve his own image, we may end up with another four years of Ferguson or he may force us to watch him take the national stage in a very frustrating bid for President. 

But soon enough, Ferguson won’t be able to simply beat his chest in the direction of D.C.. Even defending the status quo for Washingtonians will require political will, specifically to find new revenue to backfill withheld funding, a challenge Washingtonians should have no faith Ferguson will rise to. 

In this year’s budget negotiations, Ferguson prioritized the profits of mega-corporations and the comfort of the ultrawealthy over the strength of the State’s social safety net. 

And he’s done very little to combat the impending devastation from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. According to the Governor’s Office, at least 250,000 Washingtonians will lose Medicaid coverage and as many as 150,000 Washingtonians will be priced out of the state’s health care exchange due to these cuts. The state could lose the entirety of a state’s Medicaid funding if it provides healthcare to undocumented residents. The package also cut funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Every single one of the 1 million Washingtonians who use SNAP benefits will see their benefits reduced and more than 130,000 may lose their benefits entirely. 

Feguson didn’t write up a detailed plan or call a special session to pass the revenue he shouldn’t have blocked in the first place. He did what he and the Democrats always do: Finger wag the Republicans and hope that the people who disappear or die from his inaction are low propensity voters anyway.