The Seattle Police Department Sided With ICE, Roughing Up Protesters So A Van Could Escape Federal Building

The Seattle Police Department (SPD) helped Homeland Security’s Federal Protective Services (FPS) officers break up an anti-ICE protest at the Henry M. Jackson Federal Building Tuesday evening. While somewhat predictable, the move comes just hours after Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes said he expects to be jailed for resisting President Donald Trump’s orders in response to questions about the crackdown on protests in Los Angeles. The whole ordeal raises concern about the strength of city and state laws designed to limit local police from facilitating deportations and sets the stage for more collaboration between SPD and the feds if actions against ICE heat up again. 

About seven hours into the Lime Bike barricade at Seattle's Federal Building, documented in close detail by The Burner Seattle across social media platforms, FPS got desperate. As reported by Gossip Guy, SPD spokesperson Brian Pritchard said the department answered a call for “mutual aid” from FPS and came to the protest in a “support role.”  

At about 8pm Tuesday, as seen in several videos from protesters, SPD held a line, separating protesters from a garage on Marion street, one of four garage exits at the Federal Building. Protesters told The Burner and video evidence shows that SPD deployed pepper spray and shot pepper balls to keep protesters from blocking a white van that drove out of the garage. Who was in the van remains unknown, but protesters worry for the worst — that the van may have contained detained immigrants. 

As KUOW has reported, ICE has adopted a disturbing new tactic. Over the past few weeks, plain-clothed and masked ICE agents have been lurking in the hallways of the Seattle Immigration Court, housed inside the Federal Building, waiting to arrest immigrants when judges dismiss their deportation proceedings. Activists built barricades on Tuesday to prevent ICE from carting off any potential detainees. 

ICE's media contact did not answer my question about who was inside the van, instead they sent over a statement praising all the brave officers.

But even if ICE managed to escape the Federal Building with immigrant detainees on Tuesday (again, unknown), SPD may not have run afoul of the slew of Seattle and Washington laws to prevent local police from collaborating with ICE. Per a 2003 Seattle law, Seattle cops and other employees are instructed to not ask for citizenship status of any person (with several exceptions). In 2014, the County passed a law to not honor detainer requests from ICE for undocumented people arrested for low-level crimes. Most pertinent of all, the 2019 Keep Washington Working Act, bans local police from collaborating with ICE in many ways. However, this law does not prevent SPD from coordinating with the feds to crack down on protests, which after Tuesday, it is not hard to imagine situations where SPD's crowd control could aid in a deportation. SPD did not respond to request for comment about compliance with pro-immigrant laws such as the Keep Washington Working Act.

And this won’t be the last time SPD gets chummy with ICE. According to a  statement from the Mayor’s office, Mayor Bruce Harrell said his administration is “working closely with SPD to ensure adequate preparations and staffing for any demonstrations.”