Posts to Reddit Monday alleged US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were expected to board state ferries on Tuesday.
One post on r/Kitsap said all ferry workers had received an email that ICE would start doing their “Gestapo impression” on ferries starting the next day. Another user wrote on r/Bremerton that they’d confirmed workers were sent an email about how to handle ICE, a “likely presence” in the days to come.
The posts were only partly right. Workers were sent an email about ICE. But Washington State Ferries (WSF) wasn’t warning of a possible raid or raids. The agency was recirculating legal guidance from the Washington Attorney General’s Office, wrote WSF Spokesperson Dana Warr in an email.
“There is no indication or truth that ICE will be targeting WSF vessels today even though there is lots of social media content that would indicate this,” Warr writes.
The email was intended as “clear guidance” from the state if immigration agents engaged with employees, Warr writes.
Here is the memo, first sent in January.
To summarize (if you’re not into reading .pdfs), the advice for state agency workers is to direct federal immigration authorities seeking “access to people, locations, or information” to the “Agency Designee” in charge of processing those requests.
If feds claim to have a warrant granting them access to a non-public space, the memo instructs staff to request a copy of that warrant, to note the date and time of the interaction and to take down the names and badge numbers of the federal agents. Employees should ask those agents to wait in a public space while they talk to the agency designee in a private agency space. Employees should not allow agents to follow them into private spaces, but should “generally refrain” from closing public spaces to immigration authorities, the memo says. They may, however, provide alternative private spaces for anyone waiting for an appointment with their agency.
Staff who have notified the designee have no obligation to say anything more to federal agents, the memo says. If pressed, they “can simply reply that they have notified the agency designee.”
Rumors about possible ICE raids travel fast online. The urgency is real. The goal of President Donald Trump’s administration is to deport as many undocumented people as quickly as it can. To do that, it’s willing to ignore due process and menace citizens who speak out, peacefully or otherwise.
The Reddit posts followed two weeks of high-profile immigration enforcement. In California, workplace raids lead to days-long protest actions; against the wishes of Gov. Gavin Newsom, Trump deployed the National Guard and Marines. Here in Tukwila, ICE summoned hundreds of immigrants to their offices for a check in this weekend, when the offices are typically closed, and ultimately detained two of them. The ICE special response team used chemical agents on protesters. Tukwila PD used pepper balls and flash bangs on them.
People who want to help undocumented people in their community should be careful not to add to the fear and confusion by sharing speculation or unverified rumors. A good rule of thumb is not to boost a claim if you can’t see photos or documents.
We’ve reached out to legal and immigration experts for more detailed guidance. We’ll update this story when they get back to us.
