WA AG sues Adams County for cooperating with immigration enforcement beyond what state laws allow

Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown sued Adams County and the Adams County Sheriff's Office on Monday, accusing them of violating a state law that limits local involvement in federal immigration enforcement.

The lawsuit claims the Adams County Sheriff’s Office has illegally held people in custody based only on their immigration status, helped federal agents question people in custody, and routinely given immigration officials confidential personal information of hundreds of Washingtonians — including birth dates, home addresses, driver’s license numbers, and fingerprints. In addition, the state alleges the county has “gone out of their way to enable federal immigration agents to interview or question people in custody, including transporting people in county vehicles expressly for that purpose.”

In announcing the lawsuit, Brown said Washington law does not interfere with the ability of federal officials to enforce immigration law. But Adams County Sheriff Dale Wagner disagrees.

“The state’s restrictions attempt to tie the hands of law enforcement, making it harder to cooperate with federal agencies that help keep dangerous individuals off our streets,” Wagner wrote in a statement posted to Facebook on Monday. “Public safety should never be a political issue, yet this lawsuit prioritizes ideology over the safety of our communities.”

The suit sets the stage for a potential legal battle as the Trump Administration takes aim at so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions that decline to assist federal agencies. It also tests the state’s Keep Washington Working Act, passed in 2019, which prohibits local law enforcement from asking people about their immigration status or holding someone for immigration agents.

“The sheriff of one of our counties is not following the law,” Washington Attorney General Nick Brown said Monday. “It is a bipartisan priority that people follow the law.”

Adams County is a largely rural farming community in Eastern Washington. Recent census data shows a population of about 20,000 people, nearly 65% of whom identify as Latino or Hispanic.

According to the lawsuit filed in Spokane County Superior Court, Adams County and its Sheriff’s Office “have consistently engaged in several practices that violate state law” since at least 2022.

In 2022, the state Attorney General's Office sent a letter to Adams County Sheriff Dale Wagner and Prosecuting Attorney Randy Flyckt, raising concerns about cooperation with federal immigration agencies. According to the letter, county officials aided Immigration and Customs Enforcement more than 200 times between May 2019, when the Keep Washington Working Act took effect, and December 2021.

Since then, the Attorney General’s Office began meeting with Adams County to address those concerns.

“Over the course of almost two years, they did those meetings, said they were changing policy, said they were acting consistent with state law, and then, in fact, were not,” Brown said. “[They] never once claimed that what they were being asked to do somehow violated federal law.”

The presidential election changed their tone, Brown said.

In late February, Brown received a letter from attorney Joel Ard who said he was appointed as special deputy prosecuting attorney for Adams County to push back against state law. Ard is with the Ard Law Group and backed by America First Legal, a law firm founded by Stephen Miller, an advisor to President Donald Trump.

“It doesn't surprise me because of their alignment with the American First group and Stephen Miller and his racist rhetoric,” Brown said, “but that was a new shift.”

In a letter to Brown’s office, Ard wrote, “Adams County simply desires to follow federal immigration law and to cooperate with the lawful requests of federal officials. Following the law passed in the Keep Washington Working Act stops them from doing that, Ard argued.

In recent weeks, America First Legal launched a social media campaign criticizing Washington’s law and said it was “combatting Washington State’s illegal sanctuary scheme.”

“Our nation’s immigration laws reflect the democratic will of the people, and it is outrageous that the State of Washington has been working to subvert it while at the same time facilitating the invasion of our country,” said James Rogers, senior counsel for America First Legal, on the organization’s website. “It is even more disgraceful that the State of Washington would target one of its own counties because the officials there have the courage to follow the law and have been cooperating with ICE to help keep our country safe.”

According to the state’s suit, the state “has the right and the responsibility to decide for itself how to use its own resources to keep residents safe and the economy strong. The federal government has no authority to coerce or direct local law enforcement for its own purposes.”

The state’s Keep Washington Working Act does allow local officers to work with federal immigration officials in certain instances, such as participating in joint operations targeting human or drug trafficking, investigating crimes against children, or notifying federal authorities when someone without legal status leaves the Washington Department of Corrections and ICE wants to detain them.

“We're talking about civil immigration enforcement, not the enforcement of criminal immigration provisions,” Brown said. “I'm sure that Stephen Miller and his lawyers will disagree, but we'll have that fight in court.”

In early January, a Washington resident also filed suit against Adams County and Sheriff Dale Wagner, claiming specific violations of the Keep Washington Working Act. It alleges the Sheriff’s Office continued to hold a man in jail after a judge ordered his release, and had him talk to immigration officials over the phone without a required written consent.