(Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Dozens of Democratic lawmakers in the Washington Legislature have pushed in recent months to reassess how the state Department of Corrections shares information with federal immigration authorities.
But Washington’s governor and attorney general, both first-term Democrats, see no need to change current policy.
The Keep Washington Working Act, passed in 2019, strictly limits local police from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement. This month, the statute has spawned a war of words between Gov. Bob Ferguson and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi over whether it violates federal law.
The Department of Corrections remains an exception under the state law. And that doesn’t sit well with some Democrats.
“I don’t think that we have done everything in our ability to keep communities safe,” said state Rep. Sharlett Mena, D-Tacoma. “Certainly, I don’t think we’ve done enough with Department of Corrections information sharing.”
The state agency can ask for and collect information about inmates’ immigration status and country of origin to share with embassies, spokesperson Christopher Wright said. Prison staff don’t confirm this information. And incarcerated Washingtonians aren’t required to provide it.
The Department of Corrections sends a weekly report to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement listing the names of everyone newly admitted to the state’s prisons, regardless of immigration status. ICE compares those names to its list of people who they believe should be deported.
Agents can then share detainer requests with the Department of Corrections, allowing the prison system to let immigration authorities know when people will be released and coordinate transferring custody to ICE.
Corrections doesn’t hold people beyond their release date so that ICE can pick them up, Wright noted. And the agency doesn’t allow agents to interview incarcerated people on their immigration status while in prison, unless the person consents.
Despite the information sharing between the department and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the number of people federal immigration authorities detain after their release from Washington prisons has been dropping for years, state data shows.
Of the 61 prisoners wanted by immigration authorities who have been released this year, ICE has picked up 51 of them, the highest rate in the past decade. In 2024, immigration agents detained 101 of 128 of those leaving prison.
The number of prisoners exiting with ICE detainers has dropped over the past decade from more than 300 in 2015. This mirrors a declining prison population in general, Wright said.
The more than 500 prisoners still in custody with ICE detainers have mostly been convicted of violent offenses. More than one-third are serving time for murder convictions, and more than one-quarter are in prison on rape charges, according to state data.
ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security didn’t provide comment.
‘Why do we do this?’
In a letter to Ferguson in June, around four dozen state lawmakers, as well as city and county council members from western Washington, called for a second look at the Department of Corrections’ role under the law.
Mena, who spearheaded the letter, met with top aides from Ferguson’s office about the concerns. She said they were receptive to changing prison policy. She’s now figuring out ways the Department of Corrections is sharing information that isn’t required by federal law that Ferguson could address through executive action, instead of through new legislation.
For example, she says prison staff don’t need to ask prisoners about citizenship status. She also wants Corrections to stop volunteering the lists of people newly admitted into prison.
“I want to have a deeper conversation about, why do we voluntarily share that list, as opposed to letting the Department of Homeland Security specifically request information about certain folks?” Mena said. “That is truly not required. That’s my biggest question mark is, why do we do this?”
Some worry changing the law could make it vulnerable to legal challenges.
In a February press conference, Ferguson noted advocates’ concerns about the state prisons’ continued cooperation with immigration authorities, but said he wouldn’t make changes.
Ferguson’s position hasn’t changed.
“We’re always happy to have a conversation about anything that the state’s doing,” he said in an interview Thursday. “But I think the Legislature in 2019, when they passed the bipartisan Keep Washington Working Act, struck a good balance. They carved out an exception for the Department of Corrections in a thoughtful way and the Department of Corrections is acting in a way that’s totally consistent with the Keep Washington Working Act.”
Similar to Ferguson, state Attorney General Nick Brown said he doesn’t “see any reason right now to change the law” on Corrections’ information sharing with ICE.
“We want to make sure that we’re continuing to protect people in Washington from people who have committed crimes or have a risk of danger moving forward,” he said in an interview this week.
Wright, from the Department of Corrections, also said the agency has “no intention” of changing its policy.
Meanwhile, Mena said President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda has created more urgency around the issue.
She has been leading the charge on this in part because of one of her constituents, Ngoc Phan, whose husband had finished a 25-year sentence for murder and assault when ICE detained him.
Tuan Thanh Phan was a lawful permanent resident from Vietnam before his conviction. He was in limbo for weeks in the African country of Djibouti as advocates fought in court the Trump administration’s move to deport immigrants to so-called third countries. These are places where the deportee has no ties.
Ferguson denied a pardon request for Phan, to the disappointment of Mena, other lawmakers and advocates. The U.S. Supreme Court in early July cleared the way for the final deportation of Phan and seven others to South Sudan in the headline-grabbing case.
This year, lawmakers approved an expedited pardon process for immigrants facing deportation.
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