Seattle Public Library (SPL) director, Tom Fay, issued a staff directive SPL Protocol for Immigration Enforcement Compliance & Readiness (embedded below) which told employees, in effect, to permit ICE to arrest patrons within its public facilities. The guidance is troubling (background information about ICE operations in libraries) because among other things, it restricts employees from exercising their own First Amendment rights in such circumstances.
[pdf-embedder url=”https://www.richardsilverstein.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/SPL-Protocol-for-Immigration-Enforcement-Compliance-Readiness.pdf” title=”SPL Protocol for Immigration Enforcement Compliance & Readiness”]
Unlike in public schools around the country (including Seattle), which have routinely denied such agents access to their buildings and students, SPL warns staff not to interfere with arrests or any other public law enforcement activity. In fact, Seattle public schools have produced a set of proactive directives, which are far more robust and supportive of their immigrant students:
The work of federal immigration authorities does not overlap with these educational rights and duties. As such, the District does not permit federal immigration authorities, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), access to its school facilities except when required by law.
…School staff shall not grant federal immigration authorities access to information or buildings without prior review and approval from the General Counsel’s office to confirm the proper legal authority exists.
SPL memo ordering staff to permit ICE arrests
SPL “hands-off” staff warning
These are some of the SPL instructions regarding ICE incursions:
Do not interfere [italics mine]
Do not record interactions on a phone.** Recording an arrest could be considered an “escalation of a situation, and an officer could ask you to stop recording.
Anti-ICE courthouse protest: “Keep public spaces safe”
Warrants not required…
By following this protocol, employees are NOT put in the positon of individually assessing whether there is a judicial or administrative warrant…”
** This is a transcription of the original version of this memo which directed staff not to film ICE arrests. This pdf provided by SPL’s communications director, is a revised version, which removed this language.
The memo was likely written by right-wing city attorney, Ann Davison. Her Republican politics clearly inform the tone and content. She’s also in sync with the politics of pro-business city government.
Davison’s comms director e mailed this response to my questions about the documents:
I am not aware of these memos. Regardless, it would not be something we could discuss, as the library – like all City departments – is a client of the City Attorney’s Office. I am not saying there are not any memos, nor am I confirming that there are memos.
Since SPL is a “client” of the City Attorney, it confirms they were prepared by that office. The e mail constitutes a non-admission admission. SPL’s communications director told me that the memo is based on materials produced by the City’s Office of Immigration and Refugee Rights for a city-wide training session in February. When I asked OIRA’s communication director about the memo, he was not aware of it.
Constitutional rights and SPL
First, everyone in this country, citizen or immigrant, has a right to film interactions with law enforcement. Numerous cases throughout the nation have upheld that right. While there are some limited instances in which filming may either be inappropriate or unacceptable, the vast majority of cases permit such a right to be exercised. Second, just because an officer “asks” you to stop recording doesn’t mean he may legally restrict your right to so. Of course, ICE has never put much stock in legal-cconstitutional “niceties.”
Third, arrest warrants are required (but often ignored) for arrests except in limited cases (the memo does not acknowledged this). Both Library personnel and the arrestee may request one and ICE should present one (though it ignores this requirement in most cases, just because it can). In many, if not most cases, ICE does not have such a warrant. It can assert “probably cause” in exigent circumstances, as a wide loophole.
As I wrote above, school principals (including those in Seattle) routinely ask for warrants before permitting it to enter their premises. If they do not provide one, personnel may demand that they leave. Unfortunately, schools have more protected status than public libraries.
Fourth, the instruction warns staff not to attempt to determine if there is a valid warrant because “these can be complicated issues.” Asking for a warrant is a simple question that should not be proscribed. Either the agent answers the question or, as is likely the case, he refuses. A refusal may help the arrestee during legal proceedings.
Another glaring omission is what staff should do in the event there is no warrant. In that case, ICE performs an illegal arrest and Library personnel are advised to stand by and do nothing.
Instead of acknowledging this, the injunction presents multiple layers of administrative bureaucracy for personnel to contact in the event of an ICE incursion: MOS, CIP, Regional Manager, LINC, RM/SM/LINC, Admin-in-Charge, Comms-in-Charge. By the time any of them are notified and take action, the ICE operation will have ended and the arrested Library patron be on their way to the Northwest Detention Center or a Louisiana concentration camp. This is a recipe for inaction in the face of massive invasion of constitutional rights–both of the staff member and detainee.
Consider these scenarios: it’s Children’s Hour in the Library. 20 kids are gathered in a circle in rapt attention as the children’s librarian reads them Clifford the Big Red Dog. ICE agents enter and demand the names of the children. Any that are on a list are hauled away. What can the librarian do except watch in horror as this unfolds? Unlikely, you say? Well, ICE would like to prove you wrong: it’s doing this already:
ICE officials are seeking out unaccompanied immigrant children in operations nationwide with a view to deporting them or pursuing criminal cases against them or adult sponsors sheltering them legally in the US, according to sources and an ICE document…
The goal is criminalization of the kid…It’s backdoor family separation.”
…Officials are also gathering intelligence to see whether the children are a “threat to public safety” or whether they are viable to be deported.
Remember, we’re talking about children here, not criminals.
Another scenario: it’s the main reading room with scores of patrons reading books, magazines, checking out books at the counter, searching for information on computers, etc. A score of ICE agents swarm into the building and begin questioning everyone (even Library staff), asking their name and ID. If they’re not satisfied, they take the patron/s into custody. In a few hours, they’re either in the Northwest Detention Center or on their way to Louisiana.
Don’t dare doubt that one or both of these scenarios are possible, even likely. We are in the Age of the Police State. For example, ICE illegally arrested and deported three children who were US citizens, one of whom had terminal cancer. Anything is possible these days. Even the worst you can imagine.
SPL’s “clarification” memo: whoopsie!
A second memo followed sent by Kai Tang, director of library programs and services, after staff complained about some of the provisions in the earlier document. The latter suggested that a prior City Council “protocol” prohibited filming of enforcement activities in public spaces. I have searched for such guidance and have not found it.
The SPL memo continues:
This guidance [prohibiting filming] does not intend to strip Library staff of their citizen right to film law enforcement. The guidance is instead intended to be protective of all City staff [!] in the event that such filming may be considered a hindrance to law enforcement activity. While federal courts have ruled that filming law enforcement is generally a protected activity, they have also ruled that the right is not absolute…For this reason, the City has asked that such activity does not occur using City-issued devices.
This passage seems to suggest that if City personnel use city-issued recording devices to photograph an ICE arrest it will somehow endanger or pose a liability issue for the City. Though it is about as clear as mud.
It then offers a half-hearted endorsement of exercising constitutional rights, warning of the “risk” staff takes in doing so:
If you as a citizen [ed. actually anyone in the US, citizen or not, has constitutional rights, including the right to film police] feel it is important to capture a law enforcement activity, and you are willing to accept the potential risk associated, a personal device should be used.
Actually, if a city employee films ICE in a library facility and is arrested for doing so, the SPL document indicates s/he is on their own. The City will not defend, support or represent them in any legal case.
Neither of the memos mention Library staff who may be immigrants or refugees. What if ICE enters the building to question or arrest them? What will the agency do to protect them?
The main problem with these documents is that they do not address the massive destruction of our government institutions beginning with the federal government, but trickling down the state and local government as well. Sitting back and letting this happen in City facilities with no accountability or resistance, weakens us all and our public institutions. Do the residents of Seattle want city government to roll over and play dead in the face of police state tactics, as this directive indicates? If not, they should raise their voice.
If you are a City employee and your agency or department has received a similar directive, please contact me confidentially on Signal at ‘richards.10’
City personnel “are to cooperate” with ICE arrests
OIRA directive for city staff to facilitate ICE operations
Finally, the City Council has declared Seattle a “welcoming city.” This terminology constitutes a rejection of the “sanctuary city” designation. A welcoming city means nothing, which is perhaps the Council’s intent. City regulations do not offer any affirmative support or protection from precisely the sort of storm-trooper tactics ICE is using to kidnap and disappear legal residents and even US citizens.
In fact, just the opposite is the case. This “training” material prepared by the City’s Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs commands city staff to “cooperate with ICE operations, which by implication includes arrests:
Not Hindering
The City…does not interfere with federal agencies acting under judicial orders or otherwise within the law. Chapter 4.18 SMC states that City officers and employees:
• Are to cooperate with, and not hinder, enforcement of federal immigration laws, and • Are not prohibited from cooperating with federal immigration authorities as required by law.
There you have it. The “Welcoming City” directs its employees to “cooperate with” ICE’s kidnapping of its own residents. No, all are not welcome here. In fact, ICE gets to decide who is welcome, not the city, which stands by helplessly as residents are swept up in a dragnet and disappeared into prison-concentration camps.
In contrast, other cities and states have joined the anti-ICE resistance. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers declared he would defy ICE’s thug-boss, Tom, Homan, who threatened to arrest him for impeding his agency’s kidnapping of its residents.
Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers has said he is “not afraid” after a prominent Trump administration official suggested he should be arrested for advice he gave to state authorities regarding federal immigration enforcement…
“I’m not afraid,” Evers said. “I’ve never once been discouraged from doing the right thing and I will not start today.”
And here’s Minneapolis:
In Minneapolis, we take care of all our neighbors—no matter where they’re from. And an unconstitutional executive order won’t change that. https://t.co/wTICYEigMJ
Minneapolis, which has a policy stating that local police are prohibited from enforcement immigration law, which is a job for federal authorities.
Philadelphia declared itself a sanctuary city and its directives hinder, and indirectly sabotage ICE operations:
Philadelphia’s most notable sanctuary policy…is its refusal to have its jails honor ICE detainers or requests for release dates. An ICE detainer is a…request asking local officials to hold an immigrant, who is otherwise going to be released…so ICE can pick them up.
Failing to honor ICE detainers disrupts the deportation pipeline and makes ICE’s job more difficult…
Philadelphia ended ICE’s access to the city’s arraignment system used by the police and the district attorney. The city terminated its database-sharing contract with ICE given the “unacceptable” way it used the system, which “could result in immigration enforcement action against Philadelphians who haven’t been arrested, accused of, or convicted of any crime.”
This is the way a decent, humane city confronts such a menace to its citizens. The way a sanctuary city resists tyranny. That is not Seattle. Why are City Council members and the Mayor such moral cowards?
While ICE has the right to enter and even arrest immigrants, public libraries should have some obligation to their patrons. Otherwise, many of the patrons who use and need library services the most, will shun them in fear of wrongful arrest and imprisonment. Remember, in many if not most cases, ICE operations involve egregious violations of constitutional rights, as confirmed by federal court decisions. These SPL documents are an extremely weak standard in light to the wholesale trashing of the US Constitution and Trump’s evisceration of individual rights.
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Defend Against ICE Raids and Community Arrests
link to immigrantjustice.org
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link to aclu.org