{"id":39601,"date":"2025-03-11T16:20:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-11T21:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=39601"},"modified":"2025-03-12T02:28:15","modified_gmt":"2025-03-12T07:28:15","slug":"washington-state-sues-rural-county-for-helping-ice-round-up-undocumented-immigrants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=39601","title":{"rendered":"Washington state sues rural county for helping ICE round up undocumented immigrants"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Washington attorney general claims\u2002<\/a>in a new lawsuit<\/a> that the sheriff in rural Adams County has been breaking state law for at least three years by helping federal immigration officers round up and collect information on suspected undocumented residents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And since the election of President Donald Trump, Sheriff Dale J. Wagner has taken the position that the Keep Washington Working Act, a state law passed in 2019, is \u201cillegal,\u201d the lawsuit states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The law, passed with bipartisan support, restricts the ability of local authorities to participate in the enforcement of federal immigration law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe State cannot stand by when elected officials publicly boast that they are breaking state law and putting their own communities at risk,\u201d Attorney General Nick Brown said in the lawsuit, which was filed Monday in Spokane County Superior Court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wagner, however, disagrees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe state\u2019s 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,\u201d Wagner\u2002wrote in a statement<\/a> posted to Facebook on Monday. \u201cPublic safety should never be a political issue, yet this lawsuit prioritizes ideology over the safety of our communities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the state in the lawsuit, the law allows law enforcement agencies to focus on their core duties of public safety by protecting all residents fairly and building trust with the community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adams County is in the southeast part of the state, about 80 miles south of Spokane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lawsuit sets the stage for another legal showdown as the Trump administration takes aim at \u201csanctuary\u201d cities and states that decline to cooperate with large-scale deportation of migrants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the Washington case differs from ongoing cases in\u2002<\/a>Louisiana<\/a> and\u2002<\/a>Indiana<\/a> where the state attorneys general have gone after sheriff\u2019s departments that have refused to cooperate with ICE operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Defending the Adams County Sheriff\u2019s Office and the county, the other defendant named in the lawsuit, are lawyers from America First Legal, an organization co-founded by Trump aide Stephen Miller.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStephen Miller\u2019s extreme views on immigrants are no secret,\u201d the lawsuit states. \u201cHe has repeated white nationalist talking points and is responsible for shaping some of the Trump Administration\u2019s harshest immigration policies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2019, the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group, received a trove of emails<\/a> from before the 2016 election in which Miller cited and promoted white nationalist ideologies of white genocide, immigrants as criminals and other views.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\u2002<\/a>a statement released\u2002<\/a>on Feb. 26, before the\u2002<\/a>lawsuit\u2002<\/a>was filed<\/a>, America Legal First confirmed it was already helping Adams County defend itself \u201cagainst the unlawful and abusive effort by Washington state officials to enforce illegal and dangerous sanctuary laws.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Feb. 20, a law firm allied with American Legal First urged Brown not to sue the sheriff\u2019s office or Adams County.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFederal law is supreme over state law, and Adams County cannot discriminate against the federal government and its immigration enforcement efforts, nor can the County impede these efforts, as the Sanctuary State Statute requires,\u201d attorney Joel B. Ard\u2002<\/a>wrote in a letter<\/a> to Brown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brown, in the lawsuit, insisted that \u201cWashington has the right and the responsibility to decide for itself how to use its own resources to keep residents safe and the economy strong.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe federal government has no authority to coerce or direct local law enforcement for its own purposes,\u201d the lawsuit states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NBC News reached out to Wagner, who has been the Adams County sheriff\u2002<\/a>since 2015<\/a>, for comment about the lawsuit. He is the top law enforcement officer in a part of the state where agriculture is the main industry and more than half of the 20,000-plus residents are Hispanic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brown, in the lawsuit, charges that Wagner\u2019s deputies \u201chave unlawfully held people in custody based solely on their immigration status.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey have 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,\u201d the suit states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, Wagner\u2019s deputies \u201chave proactively and routinely shared the nonpublic, personal information of hundreds of Washingtonians \u2014 including birth dates, home addresses, driver\u2019s license numbers, and fingerprints \u2014 with federal immigration officials,\u201d the suit states. \u201cAll of this conduct expressly violates state law.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brown said that the county\u2019s refusal to comply with the Keep Washington Working Act (KWW) is an \u201canomaly\u201d in the state and that his office has, since last year, been \u201cengaged in good faith settlement negotiations in the hopes of resolving the case without costly litigation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut the inauguration of President Donald Trump in January 2025 changed things,\u201d the suit states. \u201cAdams County and the Sheriff took a new approach \u2014 rather than comply with KWW, they now claim it is illegal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

nbcnews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Washington attorney general claims\u2002in a new lawsuit that the sheriff in rural Adams County has been breaking state law for at least three years by helping federal immigration officers round up and collect information on suspected undocumented residents. And since the election of President Donald Trump, Sheriff Dale J. Wagner has taken the position that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":39602,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1418,2743,3525,21833],"class_list":["post-39601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-ice","tag-immigrants","tag-sue","tag-washington-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39601"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39603,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39601\/revisions\/39603"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}