After years of activist complaints that King County is not doing enough to monitor immigration enforcement flights using its Seattle airport, the county has hired an employee who will ensure those flights follow safety regulations and count the number of handcuffed and shackled people coming on and off.
The newly hired flight monitoring and outreach coordinator started recently at King County International Airport, aka Boeing Field, after a month of training. Her job is not exclusively focused on flights chartered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement but all those with more than 18 passengers or involving buses taking passengers to and from planes, as well as various other duties, said county spokesperson Barbara Ramey.
Derek Baker, the county's director of strategic initiatives, cast the hire in generic, nonconfrontational terms, saying it is meant to ensure compliance … across the airport" with a long list of regulations enacted in November.
But there is no question the new position — likely one of very few of its kind in the country — taps into a high-profile political and legal debate over the airport's role in immigration enforcement, especially during crackdowns launched by President Donald Trump in his first and second terms. His administration last year trumpeted the chain-gang-type restraints used on immigrant passengers to illustrate his tough approach, while activists have raised alarm about what they see as inhumane treatment and harms caused by deportation.
The county has echoed those concerns and long portrayed itself as a reluctant participant in ICE flights. In 2019, then-Executive Dow Constantine banned the federal agency from using the airport. A court ruling overturned the order in 2023, reinforced the following year by an appeals court ruling, both of which said the county was discriminating against the federal government.
Constrained, the county pledged to at least document how ICE is using the airport. Local officials created a website offering a video feed and log of immigration enforcement flights but not, until this month, a count of passengers, as promised.
The county is now fulfilling that three-year-old promise. Its website shows the number of inbound and outbound passengers for every immigration enforcement flight using Boeing Field since Aug. 1.
ICE takes inbound passengers to its detention center in Tacoma using buses run by GEO Group, the corporation contracted to run the facility. The federal agency shuttles outbound passengers to detention facilities elsewhere or deportation staging areas around the U.S. From those staging areas, immigrants are boarded onto planes headed to countries where they were born or, in some cases, so-called third countries where they have no ties.
For the first five flights in August, ICE boarded or deplaned 285 people at Boeing Field, according to the county's figures. Passenger counts are published every Tuesday.
"This is an extremely important step by a local government to ensure transparency," said Savi Arvey, who oversees ICE Flight Monitor, a data tracking project of the national advocacy group Human Rights First.
She said she knew of activist groups around the country tracking ICE flights, such as La Resistencia in Washington, but not a local government employee outside of King County. Having one do so sends a message to ICE and the federal government that local officials are concerned about how immigration enforcement flights are operating, she said.
Actually, at least one other local jurisdiction monitors ICE flights: Yakima. The city's airport started counting passengers on immigration enforcement flights after King County banned ICE flights and Yakima's facility became the substitute, according to city spokesperson Randy Beehler. Unlike at Boeing Field, the count helps Yakima Airport determine the fees paid by ICE to use the airport. Yakima also monitors ICE flights to make sure planes stay within authorized areas and to track the location of passengers and crews, Beehler said.
While ICE only occasionally uses Yakima Airport these days, the practice has continued.
La Resistencia, which opposes detention and deportation, has waited for King County to strengthen county oversight of ICE flights. In May, it came out with a report accusing local officials of rarely engaging "in anything beyond performative decrees."
The group said its observers, who watch ICE flights at Boeing Field from a video feed inside the airport, have seen safety violations. One of the most blatant, La Resistencia said in its report, is fueling of planes while passengers are on the plane, boarding or coming off — specifically prohibited in last year's regulations.
Skyservice, based at Boeing Field, handles fueling for ICE flights and did not return a request for comment.
Airports generally require safety precautions in fueling due to the risk of fire. Boeing Field made its rules more rigorous because passengers on ICE flights are handcuffed and shackled, hampering their ability to evacuate, said Baker, the county's strategic initiatives director.
Baker said he couldn't verify fueling violations. La Resistencia's observers may have seen a fuel truck attached to an airplane while passengers were boarding but "that doesn't mean it's necessarily pumping fuel," he said. It's hard to tell by looking at a camera alone, which is why having someone on the ground to monitor will be helpful, he added.
Yet, the new flight monitor will observe from camera feeds inside airport offices as well as from the airfield, according to Ramey, the spokesperson.
If the staffer sees violations, the county plans to work with whatever agency or company is involved to fix the problem rather than take punitive action.
Josefina Mora-Cheung, organizing director of La Resistencia, said she appreciates the county's creation of the position. "Finally, it happened," she said, adding that she didn't think it would have without activists pressuring officials.
Still, she said she is waiting to see whether the county will enforce its rules. La Resistencia will in any case continue its own monitoring of flights. "We're determined to make sure there's still a community eye on what's happening," Mora-Cheung said. The activists' counts have differed slightly from the county staffer's.
There are far more flights to keep track of than there used to be. A couple years ago, roughly one ICE-chartered plane a week arrived at Boeing Field. Now, such planes typically come three times a week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Occasionally, as on July 28, two ICE-chartered planes arrive on the same day.
One of those planes didn't leave until 4:50 a.m. the following day. That's likely to be an off-hour for the county's flight monitor, who works 40 hours a week, so some planes may come or go unobserved. "We'll obviously do the best we can, Ramey said.
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