On Monday, January 27, the Seattle City Council unanimously passed legislation limiting what Seattle police officers and other city employees can do regarding immigrants. The law, sponsored by Council Member Nick Licata, says cops and city workers can't inquire into anyone's immigration status, or engage in "activities designed to ascertain" a person's status. Now, immigrants in Seattle can rest assured that if they go pay a parking ticket, fill out city forms, or even call the police, they won't face a quiz on their legality.

It's a good thing the council passed this law, because the Seattle police evidently need some reining in. Police reports culled from The Stranger's Police Beat files indicate some officers were ignoring a June 2002 police directive that gave cops guidelines on immigration issues.

The 2002 cop policy says that officers cannot request documents for the sole purpose of determining someone's immigration status, or initiate police action based solely on a person's immigration status. In other words, immigration status is the business of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and Seattle police don't need to get involved (the new law simply applies that logic to all city employees). There are a few exceptions: If a cop has "reasonable suspicion" that a person has previously been deported or committed a felony, immigration issues are then relevant to the cop's job.

"But that [exception] is not supposed to be a blanket go-ahead to call INS because they're an immigrant or they speak with an accent," explains Pramila Jayapal of the Hate Free Zone, a civil rights group that helped write the legislation. "If the police are just calling INS because they're an immigrant, it's like stopping a black person and assuming they're guilty just because they're black."

A look at the reports shows that the city council, even in codifying the police directive, may have left a few loopholes. Situations where immigrants call the cops for help with a domestic violence incident, for example, are clearly protected by the new law, and the council and police chief backed that up with speeches on the importance of gaining immigrants' trust. But other situations--the ones portrayed in the police reports, wherein the officers contact the immigrants first--are fuzzier. The city needs to take a look at how the new law is understood and followed by cops, so officers aren't skirting the rules and immigrants aren't afraid to walk down the street. (The Stranger sent a few of the reports over to the city council before the vote for consideration. The council leaked a few of the reports to the Seattle Times, which ran a story on them on January 28.)

The reports we found--which also include records not handed over to the council, and not reported by the Times--show several situations in which officers stop public inebriates or jaywalkers, "discover" that the folks are illegal aliens, and hand them over to INS. The incidents smack of immigrant harassment; that suspicion is only enhanced by the fact that the immigrants detained had very ethnic names, like Ramon and Omar.

Two of the incidents happened just weeks ago, well after the June 2002 police directive. Downtown on January 9, two men were detained separately by the INS, with Seattle police officers blatantly helping out the federal agency.

At 3:00 p.m. that Thursday, a 35-year-old transient was walking along Bell Street when he stepped into the path of Officer V. Maes' patrol car. The cop stopped, and cited the man for jaywalking. Then, the police report says, the man was "checked and found to be a prior deport from the United States. INS Agent Copher, who was working with the [responding officer], interviewed [the man, who] admitted to being deported several years ago." He was arrested and taken to the INS holding facility on Airport Way.

Just an hour later, a few blocks away at First Avenue and Pike Street, another man was stopped for jaywalking. According to the police report, the 26-year-old man was "nearly struck by several moving vehicles as he jaywalked... across [First]." Officer M. Grinstead ran the guy's name, and couldn't find any record of identification. So Grinstead contacted Maes, "who was working with INS officers," to solve the mystery. The INS officer took the man into custody.

There are older reports, too, that showcase the problem before the directive was issued. In March 2002, several men were drinking Budweiser in Occidental Park when Officers Quiñonez and Maes saw them. "A check with INS was conducted, and [one of the men] was found to be in [the] U.S. illegally," one of the three reports said. All three men ended up in INS custody. On January 28, 2000, a man was stopped by Officer Evenson for making an illegal lane change on First Avenue. When asked for a license, the man offered a social security number instead, which Evenson used to determine that the driver was an illegal alien. The man was delivered to the INS. On August 14, 2000, Officer Miller stopped a Hispanic man in Belltown for drinking. Miller ran the guy's name through the computer, which indicated he'd been repeatedly deported to Mexico. He was detained by the INS. On February 23, 2000, another Hispanic male was drinking downtown. Officer Miller stopped him, and turned him over to the INS--he'd been deported before (though it's unclear how the officer knew that).

"That's not appropriate," Jayapal says. "It certainly says to me that there's much more of a problem than we've had the evidence to show before."

It's not clear, however, if the cops in the January incidents were deliberately violating the police directive, or even if their actions would be prohibited under the new law. It's possible the situations fell under the law's exceptions--but given the way the reports read, the police have some explaining to do. Police spokespeople did not return calls for comment.

Jayapal and others who worked on the new legislation--like Anita Sinha from the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, and Licata aide Lisa Herbold--are looking into the reports. "There's enough in them that makes me concerned that our local police department is already cooperating with the INS to a greater extent than the general public or policymakers are aware of," Herbold says. The city council plans to send the reports up to the mayor's office, and Ann Benson, directing attorney with the Washington Defenders Immigration Project, is drafting a public disclosure request to find out the extent of the problem.

amy@thestranger.com