SEATTLE — Ahead of the legislative session, and emboldened by the incoming Trump Administration, Republican state Sen. Phil Fortunato announced plans to reintroduce a bill aimed at ending Washington's Sanctuary State Law.
"This is not about immigration, this is about illegal criminals," Sen. Fortunato said. "This is a very simple bill. It's a very simple implementation. It is to get bad people out of the country."
The 2019 Keep Washington Working Act was celebrated as a landmark sanctuary law designed to protect immigrant rights. It banned practices such as immigration holds, which previously allowed individuals to be transferred directly from local jails to ICE custody.
Sen. Fortunato's bill would revert to allowing federal immigration authorities to work with local law enforcement. He said it's much safer for federal agents to take fugitives into custody while they're already in jail rather than arrest them in the community.
"They know there’s no guns, no extraneous people there," Fortunato said. "ICE agents could go in there, arrest them, and take them into custody."
"This isn't the first time that this bill has been introduced, and efforts to roll back protections in our state have come up," Vanessa Reyes, Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network's (WAISN) policy manager, said. "Immigration status isn't a reason for our local police to hold somebody in jail or participate in enforcing federal laws."
Reyes proposed bills like this would help enforce the incoming administration's immigration agenda.
"In order for those threats of mass deportation to happen, the only way for that to happen at the scale they're talking about is with the collaboration of local agencies," she said.
KING 5 asked Democratic Majority Leader Sen. Jamie Pedersen about the chances of Sen. Fortunato's bill progressing in the upcoming session.
"I imagine that that will likely be about as successful as many of Sen. Fortunato's other bills," he said. In other words, it's not likely to go anywhere.
Though the bill may have little chance of success, immigration advocates like Reyes are still concerned. They argue bills like that create an atmosphere of fear and paranoia among immigrants, regardless of their legal status.