AG Bob Ferguson a press conference outside the Federal Detention Center holding migrant women earlier this month.
AG Bob Ferguson at a press conference outside the Federal Detention Center holding migrant women earlier this month. Karen Ducey/Getty

On Thursday at the Federal Detention Center in SeaTac, state attorney general and Stranger crush Bob Ferguson announced that Washington is joining a lawsuit against the Trump administration over separating immigrant families on the southern border, part of the admin's "zero tolerance" policy against people seeking to move to the United States without prior approval.

From the Seattle Times reporter Lewis Kamb:

Ferguson’s office had intended to file a lawsuit Thursday but is modifying the legal complaint to challenge the executive order signed by President Donald Trump on Wednesday that reversed his administration’s policy to detain families together for potentially more than 20 days. Ferguson called the order “meaningless” because it does not cover children in custody and has numerous caveats.

Under Trump’s policy, more than 2,300 children were separated from their families at the border from May 5 through June 9, according to the federal Department of Homeland Security. At least nine of those children are being held in yet-to-be identified state facilities in Washington, Inslee has said. Scores of immigrant adults are being held at the SeaTac detention center.

In a shocking story published yesterday, Reveal's Auro Bogado and Matt Smith unveiled human rights abuses allegedly occurring in Trump's prison camps for immigrant children, specifically at Shiloh Treatment Center, a government contractor south of Houston. "President Donald Trump’s zero tolerance policy stands to create a zombie army of children forcibly injected with medications that make them dizzy, listless, obese and even incapacitated, according to legal filings that show immigrant children in U.S. custody subdued with powerful psychiatric drugs," Reveal writes.

One mother Reveal spoke to said her child ended up needing a wheelchair due to her treatment at Shiloh. Another child said she was "hurled against a door by a Shiloh supervisor, who then choked her until she fainted," all for the crime of attempting to open a window.

According to Reveal's investigation, "Taxpayers have paid more than $1.5 billion in the past four years to private companies operating immigrant youth shelters accused of serious lapses in care, including neglect and sexual and physical abuse."

Also yesterday, Gov. Jay Inslee announced that there are nine immigrant children who have been separated from their families and are being held in Washington. Along with the Legislature, his office authorized over $1 million in grants in emergency funding for the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project to pay for legal representation for immigrants and asylum seekers.

“Should we be confident in an administration that is morally bankrupt, that is a White House that is full of a den of deceit, that lied about what they did to these children, lied about why they did this to these children, lied about who is responsible for what they did to these children, and lied about what it takes to fix it?” Inslee said Wednesday. “The answer is no, we cannot and should not be confident of the person in the White House who, as of yesterday, was lying about this situation.”