The executive’s floor at the Chinook building downtown had mostly emptied for what was likely County Executive Girmay Zahilay’s last appointment of the day.
Standing by a window in his corner office, he pointed to the American Hotel Hostel, a small beige building not far from King Street Station. “I lived there as a kid when it was a homeless shelter,” Zahilay said.
Zahilay’s family immigrated from Sudan to Seattle when he was a young child, and the then-shelter in the International District was one of the first places they landed. Now, the former King County Councilmember is leading the largest county—2.4 million people—in Washington state, and the 12th largest county in the entire country.
Three months into the job, Zahilay has already made some significant moves. He’s issued an executive order strengthening protections against ICE, and signed on to lawsuits against the federal government on issues from immigration enforcement to cuts from the Housing and Urban Development Continuum of Care program. He’s been criticized for the return-to-office mandate for county employees, and reorganizing the executive branch so dramatically that offices like the Executive Climate Office and the Office of Equity and Racial and Social Justice no longer exist.
He issued a proclamation of emergency for major floods in the county less than two weeks after he was sworn in. And, most recently, to celebrate 100 days in office—and also to accomplish a smaller priority of “financial oversight”—Zahilay created an internal auditor position. Flashy.
In an interview with The Stranger, Zahilay talked about those experiences and what he says he’s trying to accomplish as King County’s new executive.
This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.
You just had a second daughter. What’s more exciting: the Seahawks’ win or the birth of your second daughter?
[Laughs] Birth of my daughter for sure—don’t let my wife kill me! But when we had the second daughter*, Zoe, that same week I started the job as King County Executive and we had historic floods, so I had to declare a state of emergency. We’re in the hospital and my wife has our baby and I have to say, “I’m so sorry honey, I have to rush to a press conference related to the floods.” So my wife for the rest of my life is going to tell the story of how before I even held my baby, I had to rush to an emergency press conference.
*By second daughter, Zahilay means both his second daughter and the second daughter of King County, the title he uses for his children.
These are not actual titles, but it’s really funny that he does this.
Speaking of the floods, walk me through what it was like taking office and then immediately having to deal with that natural disaster.
It was simultaneously scary and inspiring. Scary, because you’re seeing these videos of properties being washed away, levees breaking, people losing their businesses. Thank goodness more lives weren’t lost.
At the same time, the collaboration that I saw across levels of government and the private sector was really inspiring. I was daily on the phone with all of our King County department directors, with the governor, with our south King County mayors and our east King County mayors. That level of collaboration was really inspiring to see because it made me feel like we can get through anything. It really accelerated my knowledge of all the different departments and all the different elected officials around the region that I have to work with. It was a real trial by fire.
You issued an evacuation notice after a levee broke on the lower Green River. It could’ve been life-threatening, but thankfully the breach was little more than a trickle. Did you feel a little silly when you saw the size of the breach?
[Laughs] There were some parts that were not that big but the effects in many parts were huge. Even if a levee wasn’t big, the floods were massive, and I saw entire neighborhoods drowning. That was not good.
During our endorsement process, we criticized you for backing down from your campaign promise to shut down the youth jail. In 2019, you described it as “[putting] children in cages” in an op-ed for The Stranger. You’ve said you wanted to improve it. What does improving it mean to you?
My position when I was running for the King County Council in 2019 was, let’s close the jail and open other secure facilities that are smaller and more therapeutic. Once I got into office, I saw that the building itself is not really the issue, it’s what happens within it. So I’m committed to the same things that I said in 2019, just within the same location.
I don’t think there’s a need to shut down a building when we can use it and make it more therapeutic, integrated with community services, make sure there are more activities, that there is more training and collaboration with the trades and the unions to make sure young people have jobs.
I just came back from visiting the youth jail today. I was with the young people talking to them and I was getting their ideas on what could be better, and they’re telling me that they do want jobs, they do want more activities there.
By the way, we did invest in a studio and now they’re making rap songs that they played for me when I was there.
[In a follow up, we asked how a central facility jail would still provide the “close-to-home” benefits Zahilay has advocated for. A spokesperson for Zahilay said the community-based therapeutic programs and job training would support rehabilitation and reentry, but they didn’t address how the facility’s location would affect proximity to the youth detainees’ families The spokesperson also said the county will evaluate metrics like recidivism rates to understand whether these therapeutic programs are effective. But they did not say whether they know if they’re effective or not.]
You recently announced an executive order to strengthen protections for immigrants and refugees. The executive order would prohibit “immigration authorities from staging or conducting civil immigration enforcement activities in non-public areas of county-owned buildings and properties.” What does this mean?
King County owns lots of buildings and lots of property. Some of those buildings and properties you could probably define as public spaces, like a King County park. Even though King County owns it, it is still considered a public space and we are not allowed to keep anyone off of a public space. That includes ICE, unfortunately.
But private spaces that King County does own that are not public, if [ICE doesn’t] have a judicially signed warrant, they’re not allowed to enter those, and we wanted to make that very clear. So this is just an example of us trying to take every tool in our toolkit to protect our communities from what I call a rogue agency. The actions that we’re seeing are not what you’d expect from a federal government that is simply enforcing immigration laws.
How can the county enforce this?
We’ll continue suing. We have supported Minnesota in their lawsuits against the federal government because we saw a surge in operations in Minnesota that are clearly overreach. I’ve also called on our sheriff’s office to give us clear guidance within 30 days on what is the role of local law enforcement with respect to ICE and what is their plan to hold ICE accountable. I’m looking for things like making sure that you’re recording them with your body cameras, making sure that we have a way of verifying agents who are not showing their credentials.
How will King County sheriff’s deputies carry out that enforcement? How are they going to, say, verify the ICE agents?
Those are the exact type of questions that I’m looking for clarity on with my executive order. We are in such an unprecedented time with respect to the conduct of this federal administration that the law is not as clear as it needs to be. And I don’t want to, as Girmay, somebody who does not have any kind of law enforcement background, start opining on the issue. I want to ask the law enforcement agencies, what is the law, what are your responsibilities, how would you enforce these actions? And I want to take a look at that as soon as it becomes available.
How do you feel about the loss of Claudia Balducci on key Sound Transit board positions? She was a major driver in the progress thus far. What do you think that means for light rail in the county?
I’m very grateful for Councilmember Balducci’s service on those committees. I had nothing to do with setting up who goes on what—that’s the chair of Sound Transit. I voted alongside all the rest of my board members [to remove Balducci] and I’m very confident in the ability of the committees as structured to deliver on the vision that Sound Transit has ahead of it.
The Seattle Times reported that several offices under the executive were cut: the Executive Climate Office; the Office of Equity and Racial and Social Justice; the Office of Economic Opportunity and Creative Economy; and the Office of Performance, Strategy, and Budget. Why were they cut?
I think this is only a conversation because it’s King County and we’re not used to a turnover of administration. The city of Seattle has a new mayor every four years so people are used to a turnover in [the mayor’s] office. With King County, we’ve had the same elected executive for 16 years, so people are not used to change.
I was elected to advance the priorities that I talked about on the campaign trail, not to just perpetuate the status quo. My goal was to not cut any critical services that our communities rely on, but reform and restructure the executive office to better reflect the priorities that I ran on.
When it comes to the functions of those offices, that’s still continuing. So the quote-unquote climate office is not structured the same way, but it has been moved to the Department of Natural Resources and Parks.
[A spokesperson for Zahilay says strategy, budget and performance positions remain the same but not in their own sub-office. Many of the staff and functions of the Office of Equity and Racial and Social Justice remain in the executive’s office, the spokesperson says, like the language access program and civil rights enforcement. Arts and economy positions are integrated into the executive’s office.]
You recently mandated county employees return to office at least three days a week. Some union members aren’t happy about this. They’ve said many employees accepted jobs under the assumption that they’d be able to work remotely, and that having to be in office will impact working families with children. What would you say to those union members?
I would ask them where that assumption came from because I didn’t say anything new. The return to office three days a week was a mandate that came from Executive [Dow] Constantine in 2024. It’s 2026 now. For a year and a half, both myself and the next closest candidate for King County Executive were saying we support the three day return to office policy. People have had two years to prepare for something that was announced and something that I said consistently on the campaign trail.
My job is to implement the will of the voters. When I went around talking to community members, they consistently told me that they believe in either five days a week in office or they believe in a balance of remote and in-office. They want the customer service, the fast decision making, the relationship building that comes from in-office work. So my three-day return policy—which again, is just an implementation of what was announced—is trying to meet that balance.
Was there anything else you wanted to talk about?
Those four B’s are going to be the things that guide my top priorities: we’re going to work hard to break that cycle [of homelessness, addiction and trauma], we’re going to work hard to build for affordability, we’re going to work hard to put more boots on the ground, and we’re going to work really hard to make this the best government possible. And in the next few months, you will see us rolling out several policy proposals and changes that advance those priorities. Stay tuned—we’re just getting started.