WA looks to help kids whose parents are deported

Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson on Monday signed an executive order to create a state team focused on responding to the separation of migrant families as the Trump administration promises mass deportations.

The “Family Separation Rapid Response Team” will be housed in the state Department of Children, Youth and Families. Members will include officials from the governor’s office, the attorney general’s office, the Washington State Patrol and the Office of Refugee and Immigrant Assistance.

Deportation on the scale Trump has described “means ripping families apart. It means kids losing their parents. It means businesses losing their workers. It means communities being significantly altered,” Ferguson said.

“My administration will do everything we can possibly do to address those significant harms that are caused by those policies,” the Democratic governor said. “That’s making sure that kids who are torn away and separated from their parents have someone to care for them, and they have uninterrupted access to their education.”

The White House knocked Ferguson’s move.

“Radical Leftists can either choose to swim against the tide and reject the overwhelming will of the people, or they can get on board and work with President Trump to advance his wildly popular agenda,” Harrison Fields, a deputy press secretary for Trump, said in an email.

The first meeting of the new state team will be no later than Feb. 14, but Ferguson expects it to be sooner. The group will provide recommendations to the governor, and is expected to file a report by April 30.

Ferguson signed the order at the Centilia Cultural Center in Seattle, joined by numerous elected officials and advocates.

Tana Senn, a former state lawmaker who took over the Department of Children, Youth and Families under the Ferguson administration, reiterated that children whose parents are deported will have support from the state. These children are often U.S. citizens, while their parents don’t have legal status.

“I just want families to know and to feel rest assured that if that happens, your child will be safe, will be cared for and will be loved here in Washington state,” Senn said.

Trump made the promise of mass deportations a centerpiece of his campaign. One week in, his administration has already initiated an immigration crackdown.

Trump signed a slew of executive orders to overhaul the country’s immigration system. These included declaring a national emergency at the southern border, ending birthright citizenship and eliminating policies that bar immigration enforcement agents from arresting migrants at churches, schools and hospitals.

“It’s about making a terrifying calculus every day,” said Roxana Norouzi, the executive director of immigrant advocacy group OneAmerica. “Is going to work worth risk of detention? Is a church, hospital or school visit worth being separated from their children? The real threat to our country is a system that forces hardworking families to choose between survival and safety.”

On Sunday, agents arrested 956 people in raids across the country, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Before Trump took office, the average was 311 per day.

In Yakima County, an immigrant rights group reported federal agents detained two people in a grocery store parking lot on Sunday, according to the Yakima Herald-Republic.

The Keep Washington Working Act prevents local police from helping federal authorities with immigration enforcement. The law, passed in 2019 mostly along party lines with support from Democrats, also prohibited officers from asking about immigration status, with some exceptions.

Last week, the Department of Justice threatened to prosecute local officials who don’t cooperate. And, similar to his first term, Trump has raised the possibility of withholding federal funds from states and cities unwilling to aid in deportations.

In 2017, Seattle took the first Trump administration to court for punishing sanctuary cities that wouldn’t comply with immigration authorities. The city won the case.

State Rep. Jim Walsh, the chair of the state Republican Party, called Ferguson’s order “an empty virtue signaling gesture.”

“I think the people of Washington want the law to be enforced, including immigration law,” said Walsh, of Aberdeen. “No one wants to break up families, that’s not a real priority.”

Washington state has already sued over Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship, a right enshrined in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Last week, a federal judge in Seattle approved a temporary restraining order blocking enforcement of Trump’s executive order, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional.”

Ferguson said he was proud Washington was the first state to defeat the Trump administration in court during the president’s new term.

Goldstein-Street joined the Standard after working as a breaking news reporter, investigative reporter and editor at The Everett Herald. He graduated from the University of Washington, where he edited for the student paper.