Washington state’s most populous county is training staff to help illegal aliens escape warrants by federal immigration officers, including for criminal behavior such as rape and gang activity.
King County’s Department of Equity and Social Justice provides the training to staff in Seattle, according to training material obtained by Jason Rantz of local KTTH radio.
“Inexplicably, the county is welcoming to dangerous criminals,” he wrote. “It does not differentiate between a mother fleeing her home country for a better life and a gang member and rapist.”
County Code 2.15 allows illegal immigrants access to all county services and programs, Rantz reported.
“And they’re protected from cooperation with the federal government to the greatest extent of existing federal law.”
A training document says the county code “reaffirms that King County is a safe, welcoming, and inclusive community for all.”
Significantly, Code 2.15 tells law enforcement it’s illegal to comply with most federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainers, the written requests to hold a criminal illegal alien for an extra 48 hours so that the federal government can take custody.
Rantz emphasized that these are “illegal immigrants who have committed a crime beyond being in this country illegally and are subject to deportation.”
He cited one of the many high-profile incidents of state and county sanctuary laws protecting dangerous criminals. Jose Ramirez Soto was convicted of child molestation in 2018. Despite an ICE detainer, he was released from King County Jail. A year later he was arrested for harassment and threats to kill.
Rantz noted that the KCESJ website promotes a nonprofit-run “text message system to alert families of confirmed federal immigration enforcement activity that may be happening in their community.”
The county offers a guide for illegal immigrants published by by alt-weekly The Stranger titled “How to prepare for ICE raids in Washington State.”
“If ICE is at your door: don’t open the door, remain quiet,” it states.
The article advises “allies” of illegal immigrants to join a rapid response team to help during raids. An activist is quoted saying they “need bodies literally building defense lines” between illegal immigrants and ICE agents.
Rantz commented that he supports fighting for illegal immigrants such as DREAMERs, who were brought to the country as children and know no other country, culture or language.
“But let’s not pretend the county is some paradigm of virtue because it chooses to treat that DREAMER the same as a drug-dealing gang member who is in this country illegally and killing people,” he wrote. “They’re not the same. And advocates for immigrants should be offended that they’re being conflated.”
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