Send A Letter To Protect Immigrants In Washington
Recent reports from the University of Washington Center for Human Rights (January 2026) indicate that while some progress was made with ICE, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) still retains extensive access to Washingtonians' private data via systems like Nlets and ACCESS, leading to multiple civil immigration arrests.
UWCHR researchers have now confirmed 50 cases in which Washingtonians were arrested by ICE/CBP after those agencies queried data in WA’s DOL database via Nlets. When they first publish their report about this Nlets data-sharing issue in January of this year, they had nine confirmed cases. Since then, they’ve continued to research and almost every week, they have confirmed new cases. During June 2026 alone, they began investigations of 65 separate vehicular arrests reported to the Center by community members and advocates.
Karen Crowley, president of League of Women Voters of Washington and Barbara Tengtio, current Director at Large of LWSKC, co-signed a letter and sent it to the Governor requesting he take action in March. Individual members also sent letters and have received acknowledgements. The Unite & Rise Committee has been working on immigration issues, and the members are very concerned that this practice of continuing to share Department of Licensing information is putting residents at risk. The UWCHR has documented this is continuing through FOIA requests filed since their report was published. We are asking members to write to the Governor and his Policy Advisor as individuals using this draft as a template. Governor Ferguson is the primary decision-maker, and Grace Huang is his Senior Policy Advisor for Civil Rights and Human Services. By sending a letter to the Governor and emailing Grace Huang, you are hitting the administration from two angles: the broad public pressure and the direct, technical policy channel. |