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Seattle Says ICE Is Not Welcome (With Photo Gallery)

By: The Nightly Crew

1/11/2026

Demonstrators gather at Cal Anderson Park today, Sunday, 1/11, to hold a Rally and Vigil in opposition to I.C.E. (Photo taken by a reporter from The Nightly, please notify and credit us appropriately if you reuse).

National Terror

Since the start of the Trump administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Officers have been utilized to carry out the mass immigration policies of the regime. The agency has more than doubled its workforce since the Trump administration, increasing its personnel from 10,000 to 22,000. Lowered its hiring standards by halving training time and eliminating minimum age requirements. The agency has hit a record high detention number with over 68,000 in ICE detention in December, with over 70% of all ICE detainees having no criminal convictions as of late November statistics.

This comes as the Trump administration makes its willingness to use and federalize various law enforcement authorities to carry out its goals on the local level. This has included a West Coast campaign, which saw the deployment of the federalized National Guard to our neighbors in Portland. The Trump administration’s use of federal law enforcement authority serves as a means of threatening liberal and leftist places of safety in cities.

2025 was one of the deadliest years for ICE victims. At least 32 people died last year in ICE detention, according to The Guardian. Locally, at the Tacoma Northwest Detention Center (NWDC), which is just 28 miles south of us, there were reports of medical neglect. Local activists accuse the facility of medical violence in their failure to provide basic medical care to detainees. The NWDC is privately owned and operated by GEO Group. If prisons weren’t gross enough to us here at The Nightly, private prisons are even more of a sickening set of institutions. La Resistencia, a Pacific Northwest activist group, continues to advocate for detainees through their many actions, primarily oriented at the NWDC.

Last Wednesday, January 7th, ICE took the life of Renee Good, a queer woman and mother, who was described as a legal observer. This comes as the Trump Administration has begun a surge of over 2000 ICE agents in an operation in the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul; this follows the right-wing viralization of the debunked and racism-fueled video of alleged fraud made by content creator Nick Shirley, that targetted Minneapolis’ Somali community.

DHS claims that the victim “weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them—an act of domestic terrorism.” The video that has come to light in recent hours, following this reported shooting, does not match the DHS description. Protesters have taken to the streets in Minneapolis, and local politicians have told ICE to leave, including Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey telling ICE to “get the f**k out.” In the following hours, videos have surfaced of demonstrators throwing snowballs at law enforcement officers and chasing them out of their streets. In the following 24 hours, on Thursday, two individuals were shot by federal agents in Portland, Oregon.

This was not the first time ICE has taken a life, but it has certainly garnered lots of public attention. ICE has taken dozens of lives under the Trump Administration, both in ICE custody and on our streets, through their operations. We at The Nightly emphasize that we must hold the state accountable for all of these acts of violence, and stay vigilant for acts of violence against those who may come from marginalized identities and do not get the mainstream media attention required to otherwise call for action.

Demonstrators march with banner reading "Abolish I.C.E." in downtown Seattle. Photo taken and provided by Colin Renberg, (@colin.r_photography).

Seattle says ICE is not welcome.

Tipped off from various sources, I learned that local organizers (Seattle Alliance against Racist and Political Repression (SAARPR) and Seattle Against War (SAW)) here in Seattle had an emergency demonstration planned this past Wednesday at the federal building. This weekend, there were actions hosted by Defund Musk Seattle and Seattle Indivisible. These spread across the city and culminated today at Cal Anderson Park in Capitol Hill to demonstrate Seattle’s opposition to ICE. As I made my way down to the Federal Building last Wednesday and attended the demonstration at Cal Anderson Park today, I saw a clear sentiment amongst Seattleites: ICE is not welcome here.

Whether it was the over one hundred demonstrators last Wednesday who flooded the streets downtown, or the over a thousand demonstrators who came out to the “ICE Out” vigil and rally today, the consensus regarding ICE in Seattle is that they are not welcome in our city. Speakers from across local organizing groups and political offices showed up today to give their remarks. We at The Nightly remain concerned with the Democrats’ ability to act as an actual opposition force to the GOP.

Spokesperson Rachel Berkson, Deputy Chief of Staff and District Director for Rep. Pramila Jayapal, our representative in Congress (WA-7), gave a speech on her behalf, one thing that was stated stood out to us here at The Nightly: “In Congress, I can promise you, I will not vote to give this rogue DHS and ICE more money, without real guardrails and accountability that stops their complete lawlessness and terrorizing of our communities. And we will do everything we can to ensure that no Democrats vote for that. Kristi Noem should be impeached now. As the top Democrat on the immigration subcommittee, I will not let them silence us or tell us their lies.”

To which we find concern. While it is, in our opinion, the correct course of action to immediately start impeachment proceedings against Kristi Noem, we see this as far overdue. The Democrats, from our search of news and congressional archives, have failed to file impeachment proceedings against the Secretary of Homeland Security for nearly a full year now. A year that has consisted of deporting Americans, detaining tens of thousands of non-criminal immigrants, and multiple deaths at the hands of ICE. With a 33% approval rating, Kristi Noem’s reign over the Department of Homeland Security has been dangerous for human lives and our civil liberties.

We at The Nightly also do not appreciate Rep. Jayapal’s implication that she would vote for more funds to go to DHS and ICE if there were to be “real guardrails and accountability.” The moderate position is to defund ICE. The actual oppositional position is to abolish ICE and hold those who have inflicted harm on the people accountable. Rep. Jayapal’s rhetoric to appeal to Seattleites here is out of touch; in our opinion, Rep. Jayapal should be working to make ICE a source of state violence of the past and continue to vote against DHS and ICE despite whatever illusions of “guardrails and accountability” are created.

Mayor Wilson, (photos taken by a reporter from The Nightly, please notify and credit us appropriately if you reuse).

New King County Executive Girmay Zahilay and New Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson made their promises of upholding sanctuary municipality policies clear.

Part of Executive Zahilay’s speech was a set of promises to demonstrators, where he said: “I commit to you that our sheriff's deputies will not make immigration related arrests on behalf of ICE. I commit to you that our jails will not hold people on civil immigration charges on behalf of ICE. I commit to you that we will safeguard people's personal, identifiable information and not share that with ICE. But we know that these are commitments at a high level, and people's experiences on the ground are often different. And so I commit to you to working with our immigrant advocacy organizations and each and every one of you to make sure what I say at a high level matches what people are experiencing on the ground.”

Mayor Wilson made similar remarks about her new administration: “We uphold our laws that prohibit our local law enforcement from collaborating with ICE. We provide legal aid resources and other support to our immigrant families. And my pledge to you is that we will get creative about the legal and every other tool that we have to protect every person who makes our city their home.”

We found these remarks hopeful. Recognizing the need for local law enforcement not to cooperate with ICE, while not perfect, is a solution these policymakers can implement in their positions of office. While the King County Sheriff’s Office and the Seattle Police Department aren’t the bastions of local control that we should ultimately seek out, they are under more control than federal law enforcement, and should not be cooperating with the forces from Washington, D.C. that have come to terrorize our city. We hope that Executive Zahilay and Mayor Wilson’s new ‘progressive’ administrations will follow through with these promises.

Mayor Wilson also touched on an item that has been concerning to many activists at the UW. She shared that she thinks “we can agree that the folks locked up in the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma should not be subject to inhumane conditions.” Which has been an ongoing and alarming concern of activists who have seen reports of medical neglect at the Detention Center. We are relieved that this is finally an issue on the agenda of local politicians, and hope they will go on to pressure the forces that be and enact policy decisions to inhibit the NWDC and create obstacles to its operations.

As we observe the terror of the state continue to grow in its form of reactionary ideology, we call upon all readers to continue to stand in solidarity with those victimized and martyred by the government. We call upon all readers to organize with their communities, organizations, families, and friends, to make the message clear: ICE is not welcome in Seattle.

I would like to leave Nightly readers with a quote from a speaker that we found incredibly impactful, while we recognize part of this quote is from the T.V. series Andor as part of Karis Nemik’s manifesto, the director of Seattle Indivisible, Charles Douglas III, read it so elegantly today:

“There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy. Remember this. Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously without construction. Random acts of resistance are occurring constantly in our own country. There are whole groups that have no idea they've already enlisted in the cause. Remember, the frontier of the rebellion is everywhere, and even the smallest act of resistance pushes our lines forward. Remember this. The imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort; it breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that, and know this. The day will come when all of these fights, these moments of defiance, will have flooded the banks of the Empire's authority, and then there will be one too many, one single thing will break them. Remember this, try.”

Photo Gallery (Photos taken by a reporter from The Nightly, please notify and credit us appropriately if you reuse):

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