WA lawmakers push for immigrant protections amid increased federal deportations
For Washington’s Democratic leaders, expanding protections for immigrant communities is a top priority this legislative session as the federal government carries out its mass-deportation campaign.
This comes as President Donald Trump has renewed vows to take federal funding away from states with sanctuary cities that resist federal immigration efforts.
Democratic state lawmakers and advocates contend that fear is gripping local communities as federal agents, including from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), ramp up arrests. Republicans and some law enforcement officials blast the new immigration-related bills as dangerous and unconstitutional.
During Gov. Bob Ferguson’s Jan. 13 state of the state address, the first-term Democrat emphasized that he wants to see a bill by state Sen. Javier Valdez reach his desk.
“We need to be direct about what is happening in our country and our state with ICE. It’s horrific, it’s unjust, and it needs to stop now,” Ferguson said, prompting Democratic lawmakers to stand and applaud.
Valdez’s Senate Bill 5855 is emerging as one of the most hotly contested bills of the 2026 session. It would bar law enforcement, including federal officers, from donning masks, which many ICE agents wear while making arrests.
That federal law enforcement agency has come under fire in recent months over reports that officers have racially profiled and detained U.S. citizens, and over its role in the recent shooting death of Minnesota woman Renee Good.
Republican state Rep. Jim Walsh of Aberdeen, who walked off the House floor after the governor’s state-of-the-state ICE comments, told McClatchy that there’s been a spike in cases of incitement to violence against ICE agents. He said immigration officers’ use of masks isn’t nefarious but rather a precaution against being doxed, whereby someone’s private information, such as a home address, is shared online.
“I believe the whole ‘masked law enforcement issue’ is not serious policy,” said Walsh, who also chairs the state Republican Party.
State Sen. Yasmin Trudeau told McClatchy that she represents a diverse group of constituents, many of whom are afraid. The Tacoma Democrat is the first immigrant from Bangladesh to serve in the Washington statehouse.
Trudeau said she never imagined an America in which someone could “approach me in the middle of a street and not have any documentation for why they might be throwing me to the ground, handcuffing me, arresting me, and not letting me call my kids.”
“It’s already being described as an Orwellian nightmare where you can hardly believe what you see,” she said, “but we have to believe what we’re seeing.”
The lawmaker is the prime sponsor of Senate Bill 6002 that would restrict the use of automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras, also prohibiting them from assisting immigration efforts.
The bill is set for a hearing in the Senate Law & Justice Committee at 8 a.m. Jan. 20, and for an executive session in the same committee Jan. 22 at 10:30 a.m.
WA’s mask ban for ICE
Valdez spoke about SB 5855 during a Jan. 13 public hearing in the Senate Law & Justice Committee. The Seattle Democrat noted that last summer in Bellingham, an immigrant lacking permanent legal status was detained by masked federal immigration agents in unmarked cars.
Paula Sardinas with the Washington Build Back Black Alliance testified in support of the bill, calling it an accountability proposal. She said communities of color know the harm caused by “masked authority,” which invokes trauma.
“For many of us, it harkens back to the era of the Ku Klux Klan,” Sardinas said. “That history is not abstract for Black and brown communities: It is our lived experience.”
Others pointed out their concerns with the bill.
Pete Serrano, first assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Washington, told lawmakers that the legislation endangers the safety of law enforcement and the public alike. He underscored concerns that it lacks constitutionality, citing the U.S. Supremacy Clause establishing that federal law supersedes conflicting state law.
The U.S. Department of Justice recently sued California over its own mask ban.
The Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs also testified against the bill, arguing that more work needs to be done in terms of carving out exceptions. But not every law enforcement official agrees.
Thurston County Sheriff Derek Sanders said in a call that he doesn’t have issues with SB 5855, pointing to its exemptions for protective gear like gas masks used during SWAT raids. He said his county’s officers already don’t wear facial coverings on patrol.
His Pierce County counterpart sees things differently.
Sheriff Keith Swank told McClatchy that the state has no ability to prohibit ICE agents from wearing face masks.
“That’s virtue signaling to reach out to their constituents who think ICE is evil,” the Pierce County sheriff said of the bill. “It’s purely political theatrics.”
SB 5855 passed out of its committee 5-4 on Thursday, along party lines.
Washington ‘SAFE’ Act
Malou Chávez, executive director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, said that the federal immigration detention center in Tacoma, which holds more than 1,500 people, has filled to capacity. Washington has seen a spike in targeted arrests, sparking fear in immigrant communities, she added.
“To know that perhaps someone going to school or dropping off their child at a day care — or even going to the hospital — that ICE cannot be allowed in unless they have this judicial warrant, that would reduce that fear,” Chávez said in a call.
Another bill in the state Legislature seeks to do just that.
State Sen. Drew Hansen, a Bainbridge Island Democrat, is the prime sponsor of the Secure and Accountable Federal Enforcement (SAFE) Act. SB 5906 aims to prevent warrantless ICE raids in non-public areas of K-12 schools, early learning centers, higher-education institutions, election offices and health-care facilities.
A news release announcing the bill states that “ICE typically uses administrative warrants, which only require approval from an ICE officer or official and are not subject to the same level of scrutiny as a judicial warrant.”
Hansen told McClatchy that the state already has strong protections for public schools, universities, colleges and hospitals. But he wanted to broaden such safeguards to day cares and private health facilities — putting it into state law instead of only having it spelled out in model policy from the state’s attorney general.
“We just want to expand and strengthen those protections so there’s no doubt that people in the state are safe going to school or going to a doctor, dropping their kids off at a day care,” he said.
In November, the Tri-City Herald reported that federal immigration agents had visited a preschool in Kennewick. The pair of officers relayed that they were with Homeland Security but did not present any court documents, according to the Herald.
SB 5906 is scheduled for an 8 a.m. public hearing on Jan. 20 in the Senate Law & Justice Committee, which will also hold an executive session on the bill at 10:30 a.m. on Jan. 22.
False identification as a peace officer
Days before the start of the 2026 session, Ferguson identified six priority bills that he wants to sign into law. Among the bunch: House Bill 2165 by state Rep. Edwin Obras, a SeaTac Democrat, which would create a gross misdemeanor offense for falsely identifying as a peace officer by possessing items — such as realistic attire, badges or vehicles — bearing the insignia of a law enforcement agency.
Swank and other critics have decried the bill as unnecessary because it’s already illegal to impersonate an officer.
At a Jan. 13 hearing in the House Community Safety Committee, Obras argued that under current law, an impersonator has to behave like an officer before action can be taken against them. So, even if the interloper drove a car that looked like a police vehicle or wore a law enforcement uniform, until they “take further action to pretend to be a law enforcement officer or federal agent, they have done nothing illegal,” he said.
Obras cited recent examples of bad actors pretending to be ICE in his argument for the legislation. In one 2025 case from North Carolina, an alleged ICE impersonator was accused of sexually assaulting, and threatening to deport, a woman.
“Impersonation undermines the actual authority of certified law enforcement officers,” Obras told lawmakers at the hearing.
HB 2165 is set for an executive session in the same committee on Jan. 22 at 8 a.m.
This story was originally published January 17, 2026 at 5:00 AM.
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