It took just hours after his swearing in for President Donald Trump to reignite a fight he waged for four years against Washington state and its more progressive counties and cities, which insist they will play little part in helping the federal government target undocumented immigrants for deportation.

One of his executive orders takes aim at "sanctuary" jurisdictions, promising to cut funding should local officials refuse to cooperate. An additional internal Department of Justice memo threatened to prosecute local officials who decline to help.

For the more progressive governments in the state, such as Seattle, King County and Gov. Bob Ferguson's office, the order is viewed as an affront to their sovereignty and an action to be fought.

Some Trump-friendly Washington counties, which have chafed at a 2019 state law barring their cooperation with immigration enforcement, are more eager to lend a hand.

Although Trump has always taken an aggressive posture toward those living in the country without documentation, his second administration has elevated hard-line voices like Stephen Miller's, a top adviser who has targeted not only those here illegally but also those granted temporary legal status by the Biden administration. With a Trump-friendly Congress and U.S. Supreme Court — and fewer moderate voices in his cabinet — the temperature between local officials in Washington state and the federal government could rise even higher this time around.

That's especially true if federal immigration officials start carrying out large-scale raids and arrests in Washington. Rumors to that effect flew around the state last week, magnified in a climate of fear by social media. As of late Friday afternoon, none had been confirmed by either U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network, which runs a hotline for reports of ICE activity.

A state law passed during the first Trump administration largely — but not entirely — bars local law enforcement agencies from assisting federal immigration enforcement.

The law, passed with near-unanimous Democratic support and just three Republican votes in 2019, made Washington a so-called "sanctuary state," though that term is unofficial and has no set definition.

Local law enforcement cannot arrest or detain someone solely to determine their immigration status, even to comply with a request from federal immigration agents, unless there is some other criminal issue at hand. Local law enforcement cannot inquire about a person's immigration status, with very few exceptions.

"Being undocumented in the United States is not a crime under local, state or federal law," guidance for local law enforcement written by the state Attorney General's Office reads.

The law prohibits local law enforcement from disclosing private information that isn't involved in a criminal case to federal immigration authorities. There are exceptions. Local authorities, for instance, cannot be barred from sharing information with federal authorities about a person's immigration status, but they may not share information like a person's home address, jail release date or court dates.

And it prohibits local law enforcement and jails from holding someone so they can be taken into federal custody, unless federal officers have a warrant or court order signed by a judge or magistrate.

In an exception, the law allows the state Department of Corrections to notify U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement about prison release dates of undocumented immigrants so the federal agency can pick them up. A bevy of immigrant advocates recently asked Ferguson to end the practice and, in a letter dated Inauguration Day, he declined, saying he did not support amending "sensible provisions" in the law. He noted the law protects the right of people in prison to decline to be interviewed by immigration authorities.

The governor said he would direct his team's energies toward protecting "Dreamers" who came to the U.S. as children and received temporary, quasi-legal status under a program launched by former President Barack Obama, as well as "preparing for an unconstitutional attempt to end birthright citizenship and protecting our state from any unlawful use of the National Guard to carry out an order for mass deportation."

Washington Attorney General Nick Brown sued Trump and his administration Tuesday, the day after the president issued his executive order to end the granting of U.S. citizenship to every person born here. A federal judge in Seattle issued a temporary restraining order, blocking the order from taking immediate effect.

Many officials across the state — in Democratic- and Republican-voting jurisdictions — pointed to state law in stressing they will not participate in immigration enforcement even under the new presidential administration.

"The Kittitas County Sheriff's Office will not take enforcement action based on immigration or alien status," Kittitas County Sheriff Clay Myers wrote last month.

The Moses Lake Police Department wrote "the community will not see any changes from how we currently operate."

Yakima County Commissioner Amanda McKinney wrote that the 2019 law "effectively makes the State of Washington a sanctuary state."

King County Executive Dow Constantine stressed the county's public health department does not collect immigration information for law enforcement purposes and public transit fare enforcement is unrelated to immigration status.

"We remain committed and bound to enforce state and local ordinances protecting the rights of immigrants," wrote Amy Enbysk, a Constantine spokesperson.

In Benton County, Commission Chair Jerome Delvin took a different view. He said the state law prohibiting cooperation with immigration officials "ought to be changed." Earlier this month, Delvin broached the possibility of providing space in the county's undercapacity jail for people arrested by ICE. Delvin envisions a contract with the federal agency, which would need much more jail space if mass deportations and detentions become a reality.

The privately operated Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma has 1,575 beds, between 800 and 900 of which are currently filled, according to an estimate from the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, which regularly visits clients there.

Delvin said he's waiting for a legal opinion before moving forward with the idea. "The whole sanctuary state and city thing, I think it's bogus," he added.

Leo Perales, a Republican Pasco City Council member in neighboring Franklin County, agrees immigrants who commit crimes and are here illegally ought to be deported. While those on the left sometimes seem to object to deporting anyone, he asked: "Do we really want people here driving drunk or selling drugs?"

At the same time, Perales, who is of Mexican descent and has relatives who were deported, said he doesn't see evidence of widespread crime among local undocumented immigrants. A building and roadway inspector, he also noted that immigrants constitute the majority of workers in the construction and agriculture industries vital to the region.

For that reason, he thinks most people in the area would not want to see local law enforcement agencies cooperate with ICE. "They'd take the workforce away," he said. "It wouldn't go over well in our community."

For others, immigration enforcement is at least in part a question of resources. The Pacific County Sheriff's Office is understaffed and overworked, said Chief Civil Deputy Sheriff Hollie Billeci. Given that, she said, her department will not seek to add immigration enforcement to its plate.

In the last Trump administration, ICE stepped up arrests in the Southwest Washington county, stunning many residents who knew those taken away as longtime neighbors and employees in the county's seafood industry.

Long Beach police Chief Flint Wright said ICE didn't ask for his help at that time. Whether it will in the second Trump administration remains to be seen. "I'm just kind of waiting to see what happens at this point," he said.

At risk for local governments who've dubbed themselves "sanctuary" or "welcoming" cities is mostly funding — for transportation projects, development grants, arts funding, even some law enforcement programs.

In 2023, Seattle spent roughly $200 million in federal dollars, about a third of which first passed through another entity, usually the state. The city's whole budget was around $7 billion.

Not all of that is likely to be at risk, at least not immediately.

"There is a lot of nuance to federal funding," the director of the city's Office of Intergovernmental Relations, Mina Hashemi, told the City Council last week.

Some of the dollars are distributed based on an ongoing formula and therefore would likely require Congress to cut the funding. That includes, for example, the city's community development block grants, doled out to help organizations in historically underserved areas.

Competitive grants, on the other hand, can have additional requirements — such as compliance with immigration officers — placed on them by Trump's administration, Hashemi said.

Many of these grants are related to security or law enforcement, from the Department of Justice or Department of Homeland Security. However, one of the largest pots of money is from the Federal Transit Administration. Seattle spent around $20 million in transit grants in 2023.

Despite the threat of missing out on some of those grants, some city officials are taking a defiant tone.

"Seattle is a sanctuary city," Councilmember Maritza Rivera said last week. "Let me be clear, that is not going to change."

Mayor Bruce Harrell, meanwhile, sent out a directive to city departments earlier this month reminding employees that the city does not ask about immigration status and the Seattle Police Department does not help Immigration and Customs Enforcement, instructing them to immediately notify the mayor's office of any requests from federal immigration enforcement.

The question of how much or what the federal government can cut from sanctuary jurisdictions was tested in court during Trump's first term, yielding mixed results. Seattle, for example, won its 2017 case against the administration, calling the targeting of sanctuary cities unconstitutional.

A separate 2019 ruling in the Ninth Circuit, however, found the federal government could dock points on grant applications from cities that don't aid in immigration enforcement.

In a statement, Ferguson said the law protects against "coercive" reductions in federal funding, as well as against the federal government attempting to "co-opt" local resources.

At the same time, Ferguson — who sued the Trump administration more than 80 times as state attorney general — acknowledged that some funding reductions, such as for electric vehicle charging stations and a new bridge over I-5, are likely to be found legal.

"These reductions would harm Washington families, but they may or may not be unlawful," he said. "We are mindful that elections have consequences. We will be monitoring these issues closely."

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(Staff reporter Jim Brunner contributed to this report.)

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