Appeals court blasts sanctuary policy that blocked ICE from using airport

The administration has won a significant legal victory over a sanctuary jurisdiction after a federal appeals court ruled against a Seattle-area policy that barred Homeland Security from using local airports to detain and deport immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally.

King County’s policy trampled on the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause and uniquely — and illegally — singled out the federal government’s deportation operations, a unanimous panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday.

The decision is grim news for sanctuary jurisdictions gearing up for President-elect Donald Trump and vowing resistance to his promise of mass deportations.

King County Executive Dow Constantine forged the ban in 2019 as part of the resistance the last time Mr. Trump held office. He acted after realizing that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was using King County International Airport as its hub to fly the migrants in and out of the Pacific Northwest.

Mr. Constantine ordered the airport, also known as Boeing Field, to refuse to issue leases to companies that did business with ICE.

All three aircraft servicing contractors at the airport then said they would refuse ICE business.

The Trump Justice Department sued in early 2020. King County lost in the federal district court and now has also lost at the circuit court level.

Judge Daniel A. Bress, writing for the three-judge panel, said the county policy applies only to the deportation business, which effectively means only the federal government.

That, Judge Bress said, runs afoul of the intergovernmental immunity doctrine, a legal construct of the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause that declares federal law absolute in conflicts with states and municipalities.

“The Executive Order therefore discriminatorily burdens the United States specifically because of federal immigration operations, based on the County’s disagreement with federal policy. This discrimination, plain on the face of the Order, contravenes the intergovernmental immunity doctrine,” the judge wrote.

Matthew O’Brien, a former immigration judge who is now with the Immigration Reform Law Institute, said immigration enforcement belongs to the federal government and the case draws important lines.

He said states can’t be forced to cooperate on immigration, but they cannot intentionally frustrate the federal government either.

“The government doesn’t have any right to command the states or local jurisdictions to undertake federal responsibilities, but by the same token. The states can’t set up any type of scheme that’s deliberately calculated to frustrate federal enforcement,” Mr. O’Brien said.

That could undermine jurisdictions such as Denver, where the mayor last month raised the idea of having police “stations at the county line to keep” federal forces out.

The case, which could still be appealed to the full 9th Circuit or the Supreme Court, has wound through the federal courts for nearly five years.

ICE said the executive order forced it to move operations from Boeing Field to the Yakima Air Terminal in Yakima, Washington. Running a bus to Yakima took a whole day as opposed to a half-day for King County, according to ICE, which said it not only increased costs but cut down on the number of enforcement actions the agency could take.

Amy Enbysk, press secretary for Mr. Constantine, said the county disagreed with the ruling.

“The Ninth Circuit’s decision allows a raw assertion of federal power to overcome an expression of local values even absent any actual impact,” she said.

She said the executive order in question was already replaced in 2023 with one that allows ICE “the bare minimum compelled by the federal courts.”

ICE said it now uses Boeing field in King County and McCormick Air Center in Yakima.

The case follows several other decisions shutting down state-led efforts to block ICE from renting detention space from private or local government jails.

The 9th Circuit had previously shot down California’s detention restrictions, and a district judge has ruled against a similar law in New Jersey.

That case is now pending at the 3rd Circuit.

King County issued the policy in response to a local outcry over ICE’s use of the airport.

Mr. Constantine, in issuing the order, said he was worried the county was assisting in “human rights abuses” he said resulted from ICE’s “troubling immigration practices.”

The county also said it feared anti-ICE protests could disrupt flight operations or chase away other businesses that didn’t want to be associated with the stigma of ICE.

The courts said both of those concerns were speculative and lacked a basis.