By Center for Human Rights, The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington,

In recent years, local and state governments in Washington have taken important legislative and executive action to protect vulnerable residents from rights abuses. Many of these actions, such as the so-called “sanctuary” laws of Keep Washington Working (2019) and Courts Open to All (2020) Acts, seek to protect the rights of migrants by limiting the degree to which local authorities can collaborate with civil immigration enforcement by ICE or CBP. More recently, the language of “sanctuary” has also been used in the context of the right to reproductive health care at both the state and local levels. On June 30, 2022, Governor Jay Inslee issued a directive prohibiting the Washington State Patrol from “providing any cooperation or assistance whatsoever” with efforts to investigate or prosecute those seeking access to reproductive health care in our state. And some local jurisdictions have followed suit. On July 5, 2022, King County Executive Dow Constantine issued an order banning the King County Sheriff and other county agencies from providing any information or assistance with efforts to “obstruct, restrict, diminish or discourage” access to reproductive health care. On July 26, 2022, the Seattle City Council voted to bar local police from assisting in investigations or executing warrants issued by other jurisdictions that criminalize seeking or assisting in abortions. These strongly worded directives are important statements of Washington state values. Yet research conducted in Washington and elsewhere shows that data gathered by state and local law enforcement remains accessible to both law enforcement from other states, and federal immigration enforcement agencies, through interoperable databases. ICE documents show that federal immigration agents have deliberately increased their use of digital tools in recent years in direct response to the limitations created by local policies designed to limit collaboration with federal immigration enforcement. Although it remains to be seen whether out-of-state attempts to prosecute people for seeking or providing, access to abortions in Washington will pass legal muster, automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) data documenting presence at abortion clinics in our state could be deployed as a powerful tool to flaunt Washington policies. For Washington to live up to its promises to provide “sanctuary” for those exercising their lawful rights in Washington, our state and local governments must take steps to close the gaps in existing systems of digital surveillance. Towards this end, the UW Center for Human Rights has launched an effort to understand the practices of digital surveillance in our state and their potential to undermine access to the very rights protections our government has pledged to uphold. This report focuses on just one dimension of this multidimensional threat: the dangers posed by the misuse of automated license plate recognition technology by law enforcement agencies. Future reports will examine other digital tools.

Seattle: University of Washington,  CENTER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS,  HENRY M. JACKSON SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, 2022. 23p.

By The University of Washington, Center for Human Rights

2019’s Keep Washington Working (KWW) Act and 2020’s Courts Open to All Act (COTA) place Washington state at the forefront of national efforts to protect immigrant rights through state law. Yet the mere passage of these laws doesn’t mean they’re actually being enforced. After 18 months of research evaluating the implementation of KWW and COTA through the analysis of practices in 13 priority counties, this first report of the University of Washington Center for Human Rights (UWCHR) “Immigrant Rights Observatory” shares several key findings. Because the local police and sheriffs have historically played a significant role in bringing Washingtonians into contact with federal immigration enforcement, this report focuses on the ways in which law enforcement agencies and jails have implemented KWW. Key findings include the following:

• Law enforcement agencies across our state are dedicating energy and effort to KWW implementation—though not, for the most part, using the Attorney General Office’s model policies designed to provide guidance to local agencies on this process.

• Everyday policing still blurs into opportunities for federal immigration enforcement. Despite KWW’s prohibitions on the sharing of non-public information about immigrant Washingtonians with ICE/CBP for purposes of civil immigration enforcement, some local police and sheriff’s deputies continued to summon federal agents to the scene of traffic stops, to provide tips about the location of specific individuals, and to participate in multi-agency task force operations that include civil immigration arrests.

• Washington jails and prisons remain key points in the pipeline to immigration detention and deportation. In the booking process, some jails continued to request place of birth information that the law bars them from gathering, and to share it—as well as other information—with ICE/CBP. Detainers, or “immigration holds” which request jails keep custody of individuals beyond their release date to facilitate their apprehension by ICE/CBP, continued to be honored in multiple jurisdictions.

• Jail contracts in flux. KWW mandates Washington’s jails to cease holding immigrants in civil detention under contract with ICE/CBP by December 2021; in anticipation of this date, at least two jails have already terminated the practice. However, one other jail has indicated it expects to continue its contract with CBP beyond that date, using probable cause statements from CBP to justify the detention as criminal rather than civil detention.

• Areas unaddressed by the law remain cause for concern. These include regular DOC-ICE release notifications, local/federal database interoperability, and other ways in which immigrants with criminal recormcnairds—not necessarily even convictions—experience law enforcement and the justice system in dramatically different ways than other Washingtonians, solely because of their citizenship.

Seattle: University of Washington, Center for Human Rights. 2021