By David Gutman
The Seattle Times
Mar. 10 — Washington Attorney General Nick Brown sued Adams County on Monday, accusing it of breaking state law by aiding federal immigration enforcement.
The small Eastern Washington county, Brown says, is illegally holding people based solely on their immigration status, helping federal immigration agents question people in custody and sharing confidential personal information — including birthdates, addresses, driver’s license numbers and fingerprints — of Washington residents.
“All of this conduct expressly violates state law,” Brown writes in the lawsuit, filed in Spokane County Superior Court.
The suit represents a new front in Brown’s legal battles with the Trump administration — rather than simply trying to block federal policies, the attorney general is pushing to stop local cooperation with the administration, where he sees it as conflicting with the law.
The Keep Washington Working Act, passed by state legislators in 2019, tells local law enforcement agencies to play little part in helping the federal government arrest or deport undocumented immigrants.
Brown writes in the lawsuit that Adams County has been violating that law since 2022, but broke off talks with the state after President Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second term. Last month, Brown writes, the county retained lawyers from America First Legal, an organization founded by Trump aide Stephen Miller .
Miller, Brown writes, “has consistently denigrated immigrant families” and “repeated white nationalist talking points.”
“According to Miller,” Brown writes, “‘America is for Americans and Americans only.’”
The lawsuit seeks to block Adams County and its sheriff from continuing to aid federal immigration enforcement.
Adams County Sheriff Dale Wagner , in a prepared statement, said they would “continue to do our jobs” and thanked America First Legal.
“The state’s restrictions attempt to tie the hands of law enforcement, making it harder to cooperate with federal agencies that help keep dangerous individuals off our streets,” Wagner said.
Adams County and Wagner also face another lawsuit from a man who says that after a district court ordered him released from custody, a sheriff’s deputy instead drove him 70 miles to hand him over to Border Patrol agents.
Wagner was one of a handful of county sheriffs who said, in 2019, that they would not enforce Washington’s newly passed gun laws because he did not think they were constitutional.
Keep Washington Working changed what, in some parts of the state, had been routine cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement . It’s a big reason Washington is considered a so-called “sanctuary” state, though that term is unofficial and has no set definition.
Washington is one of 11 states with laws that restrict — to varying degrees — local law enforcement from aiding federal immigration authorities, according to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center .
Under the law, local police agencies can’t ask about someone’s immigration status unless it’s relevant to a criminal investigation, and they also can’t arrest or detain someone solely to determine their immigration status. (Being in the United States illegally is a civil offense, not a criminal one.)
Local law enforcement cannot inquire about a person’s immigration status, with very few exceptions.
The law prohibits local law enforcement from disclosing private information that isn’t involved in a criminal case to federal immigration authorities. There are exceptions. Local authorities, for instance, cannot be barred from sharing information with federal authorities about a person’s immigration status, but they may not share information like a person’s home address, jail release date or court dates.
And it prohibits local law enforcement and jails from holding someone so they can be taken into federal custody, unless federal officers have a warrant or court order signed by a judge or magistrate.
Brown writes in the lawsuit that Adams County’s behavior “is an anomaly.”
“Hundreds of Washington law enforcement agencies across the state have successfully implemented KWW’s basic and commonsense policies without incident,” he writes.
Adams County , Brown alleges, has, for years, sent a “new in custody” jail roster to immigration officials, nearly every week. The Sheriff’s Office policy manual permits deputies to detain people solely to determine their immigration status, Brown writes.
The lawsuit cues up a potential legal battle over the Keep Washington Working law, as the Trump administration tries to target so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that don’t aid federal authorities in immigration enforcement.
Brown said the Attorney General’s Office had seven discussions with Adams County , since 2022, trying to work with the county to get it to comply with state law. Immediately after Trump was inaugurated Adams County said, for the first time, that it thought the state law was in conflict with federal law, according to the lawsuit..
Last month, Adams County attorneys sent Brown a letter asking his office to drop its efforts to get it to comply with state law.
” Adams County simply desires to follow federal immigration law and to cooperate with the lawful requests of federal officials,” wrote Joel Ard , a longtime attorney for conservative causes in Washington , who was appointed a special deputy prosecuting attorney in Adams County just for this case. “Federal law is supreme over state law, and Adams County cannot discriminate against the federal government and its immigration enforcement efforts.”
Ard referenced recent Trump administration lawsuits against Illinois and New York , saying they may clarify whether statutes like Keeping Washington Working “are lawful.”
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