A federal court has struck down King County’s ban on ICE deportation flights, citing federal supremacy and breach of contractual obligations.
A federal appeals court has ruled that an order in King County, Washington, barring U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from using a Seattle-area airport to deport illegal immigrants from the country is unlawful, affirming a lower court’s summary judgment and clearing the way for the removals to continue.
Judge Daniel A. Bress of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit wrote in the Nov. 29 opinion that a 2019 executive order issued by King County Executive Dow Constantine that prohibited the ICE deportation flights was unlawful. The ruling identified two primary legal violations: discrimination against federal operations under the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution and breach of a World War II-era instrument of transfer agreement governing the airport’s use.
Bress wrote that the executive order’s flight ban “discriminatorily burdens the United States” in the enforcement of federal immigration law and that this “discrimination, plain on the face of the Order, contravenes the intergovernmental immunity doctrine.” Rooted in the supremacy clause, the intergovernmental immunity doctrine protects federal government operations from discriminatory or obstructive actions by state and local governments.
The court also found that through Constantine’s directive, King County violated its contractual obligations under the instrument of transfer agreement, which granted the federal government the right to use the King County International Airport, commonly known as Boeing Field.
The dispute dates back to April 2019, when Constantine issued an executive order that explicitly opposed ICE’s deportation operations. The directive instructed airport officials to ensure that future leases and operating agreements with fixed-base operators—the companies that provide essential services such as fueling and aircraft maintenance—contained provisions prohibiting them from servicing ICE flights.
Constantine justified the order by citing the county’s disagreement with federal immigration policies, stating that the flights raised “deeply troubling human rights concerns which are inconsistent with the values of King County,” including family separations and deportation of people into unsafe conditions in other countries. The order effectively halted deportation flights at the airport.
By Tom Ozimek
