What's up, South End?
I hope y'all had a wonderful week.
The biggest topic of conversation for me these past few days has been cities in South King County moving to pass legislation to stop ICE from building new detention facilities in the region.
SeaTac was first to pass a bill, followed by Tukwila, where a six-month ban was passed this week.
Seattle has proposed emergency legislation, sponsored by City Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, aimed at a one-year ban on new jails and detention facilities.
Rinck says her office has consistently heard about, and from, immigrant neighbors afraid to leave their homes for work or school.
"This is all out of fear for ICE," she said. "This is all out of fear of being detained and being held for who knows how long at Northwest Detention Center."
I recently chatted with Councilmember Rinck about the bill, why she feels it is important to implement a ban now, and whether she expects to see more cities in South King County passing this type of legislation in the near future.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
MD: Does this bill exclusively cover new facilities being built, or does it also cover the expansion of existing facilities? And does this cover both public and private facilities?
AMR: With land-use code, it's all about definitions. How are we defining things? So, our bill as transmitted includes detention centers, and we also included jails in there, [because] from a legal standpoint, there's the discrimination clause. We can't look like we're discriminating against the feds. We're not. There's an important distinction between detention centers and jails. As defined, jails are publicly run. Detention centers, as we conduct them in the U.S., are subcontracted out to private contractors. In Washington, we have the GEO Group. They've been in many lawsuits.
But in our bill, essentially what we're saying is that we're hitting a pause. One of the levers we can pull as an interim land-use control is to institute a moratorium for further study. So, our legislation is saying we're going to hit pause on this [by] using a land-use control, because we recognize that from a value standpoint, detention centers and jails have an impact, and they're not aligned with our city's values. There's also the reality that, per land use, we can say detention centers and jails have environmental impacts, community impacts. There's an argument to be made that they have impacts from a growth management standpoint and a city management standpoint, and therefore we deserve, and we have the right as a city, to take a pause, study and understand it, and be able to legislate in our code how we handle their presence in our city.
MD: You mentioned that the information coming to cities from the federal government can be fragmented or unclear. But cities have the ability to communicate with each other. Is that happening? Are we seeing the seeds of a larger regional effort?
AMR: Yes, this is a regional effort. When we initially started work on this legislation, and we were gearing up to announce, we saw SeaTac did it. And we reached out to SeaTac to say, "Hey, we're doing this too. Help us. Let's unite. Let's work together." And we had already been talking to the court and the county when we were shaping up this legislation. And our discussions have deliberately been great. Now, let's model to everyone else and get as many cities as possible to adopt this.
And what we've now seen: My office reached out to the Sound Cities Association, which represents 38 cities in King County, and we put this legislation before them and said, "One of your member cities has already done this. We're going to do this. Please bring this to your members." I saw yesterday that Burien and Renton are now considering this legislation. And I'm going to be bringing this legislation to the Puget Sound Regional Council Executive Board on Thursday, which is beyond just King County. It also includes Snohomish County and Pierce County.
Beyond this legislation, we need to be improving our city-to-city partnerships. If we have a situation where there's a National Guard deployment or an ICE search, we need government-to-government agreements about how we're going to work together.
MD: What happens next in the process to get this approved?
AMR: We are less than a week out from the vote. We'll be voting on this at full Council next Tuesday, March 3, and we'll be boosting on socials as well, just to make sure folks know about the vote. But it's happening pretty quick. If it gets Council approval, it'll go into effect immediately upon the mayor's signature.
The Washington State Democrats held mid-session town halls this month to address concerns from voters regarding what politicians are doing to make life more affordable.
Contributor Connor Nash attended the session in the South End at the Asian Counseling and Referral Service on MLK Jr. Way South, which hosted the town hall for the 37th Legislative District.
Connor reported that constituents focused their questions on issues impacting them, including taxes and spending, rising utility costs from AI data centers, affordability, and education.
Soccer is continuing to grow, and as y'all know, I've become a Sounders fan.
But this story, by contributor Grace Madigan, is about a youth club building community in the South End.
Dragons FC creates affordable pathways to competitive soccer for immigrant and first-gen families across South King County.
Grace was on the scene at a practice in Tukwila to speak with players and families and meet the people who started the club and learn more about their mission.
In this guest op-ed from Ubax Gardheere, a King County-based advocate for racial equity and transformative justice, we learn about the fear Somali community members have about living in the current political climate.
Ubax discusses Somali asylum hearings that are being abruptly rescheduled to earlier dates, in some cases moved forward by months or even years, and how families are being impacted.
This is an abbreviated version of The Roundup newsletter. To get the entire newsletter, including a weekly list of events to check out and my shout-out to South End Gems, subscribe here. See you next week!
Mike Davis is the newsletter editor and Voices editor at the South Seattle Emerald. Born and raised in Seattle's South End, Mike is a longtime journalist who's covered everything from arts and culture to sports to politics.
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