Washington 'sanctuary law' allows ICE agents to pick up people leaving prison. They often don't

Washington state’s so-called “sanctuary law” is in the crosshairs of elected officials, because of how it limits local law enforcement from working with federal immigration enforcement. But new data from the state’s Department of Corrections shows that even when Washington works with federal immigration enforcement, the federal government isn’t always following through.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement places detainers on people the agency wants to deport after they’ve served their time in state prison. State law allows the Washington Department of Corrections to release such individuals to immigration authorities upon their release.

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It’s one of the few carve outs of a law passed in 2019 that generally barred government agencies from collecting a person’s immigration status, called the Keep Washington Working Act. It also limits how much law enforcement can work with federal immigration enforcement. In a recent lawsuit, the Washington Attorney General’s Office argued the issue of immigration is a federal civil infraction, not a local criminal one. A few Washington county sheriff's disagree, arguing the state law makes their communities unsafe; they allege immigrants without legal status are a community safety risk — despite decades of evidence saying otherwise.

Regardless of their arguments, state law allows local law enforcement to work with federal immigration officials in certain instances, such as cases involving human or drug trafficking or child predators, and at the state prison level.

ICE regularly places detainers, or holds, on people in state lockup who they say they have a reason to arrest and deport. ICE refers to these individuals as “removable aliens,” which may include people who have residency in the U.S., are here on a variety of visas, or are in the U.S. without legal status.

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But, for at least the past ten years, ICE has not picked up about 80 people with detainers per year, on average. That’s according to data from the Washington Department of Corrections.

From 2015 to the beginning of this year, 733 people had ICE detainers placed on them and were released back into the community rather than being detained.

Jim Kopriva is a spokesperson for the Washington Department of Corrections. The detainers only allow the department to hold people for ICE for a short period once they are eligible for release, he said.

“The federal government would take it from there. If they don't come, then the release would be processed, out you go, and that's kind of it,” Kopriva said.

KUOW reached out to ICE about why the agency does not pick up everyone they’ve asked the state Department of Corrections to detain for them. An ICE spokesperson declined to comment on the discrepancy.

But in their response to KUOW, a spokesperson said this is the agency’s preferred method of detaining someone after they’ve been released from state custody.

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“This ensures an arrest is made in a secure, controlled custodial setting as opposed to at-large within the community and results in the direct transfer of a criminal alien from state or local custody to ICE, not at large in the community,” an ICE spokesperson said.

“The agency is forced to commit eight to 10 officers to find and arrest a single criminal alien [out in the community], rather than the two or three officers it takes in a custodial setting,” the spokesperson added.

State data shows the number of people that ICE seeks to detain has also decreased over the past ten years.

The overall prison population there has also shifted, Kopriva said.

Over the past year, the average daily population in state corrections facilities was 13,017 people. Of that, 520 people currently in custody have ICE detainers.

That’s roughly 4% of the prison population.