(The Center Square) – In anticipation of mass deportations of illegal aliens by newly-elected President Donald Trump, Washington state Gov. Bob Ferguson has signed an executive order intended to provide services for children of those deported.
While Attorney General Nick Brown has filed a multistate lawsuit in response to Trump’s executive order overturning birthright citizenship, Ferguson said at a Monday press conference that “we also need to prepare … to minimize the impacts of Washingtonians when a president does something that may be lawful, but goes against our values.”
“I want to be clear about the impacts that that were to happen,” he added. “It means ripping families apart. It means kids losing their parents. It means businesses losing their workers. It means communities being significantly altered. We need to prepare if this were to come to pass.”
The executive order tasks the state Department of Children, Youth & Families to form a rapid response team that will explore possible recommended policies for “mitigating” the impacts of deportations on children who are separated from their families.
“The entire mission of the Department of Children, Youth & Families are to keep children safe, to reduce unnecessary separation from family, and ultimately reduce any trauma,” Tana Senn said, the newly appointed director of DCYF.
Speaking at the press conference, Executive Director of OneAmerica Roxana Norouzi said “we will continue to serve and defend our immigrant and refugee communities to our utmost ability, continuing to help in providing services to providing emergency planning, to uniting with our partners so that we are coming together to educate and organize our communities.”
She added that “we will build a blueprint for the rest of the nation of what’s possible when we value support and invest in immigrant communities,” in part by “using every tool at our disposal at the local and state level to ensure immigrant communities are protected.”
Meanwhile, some Republicans are criticizing the state’s sanctuary status in which public officials are not permitted to enforce federal immigration laws nor cooperate with officials attempting to do so.
Rep. Jim Walsh, R-Aberdeen, noted on X that several days prior, two illegal aliens were arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, one of them for raping a child.
“Will progressives in Olympia and Seattle complain about these arrests?” Walsh wrote. “I suspect they’ll stay silent. If we dump WA’s dumb ‘sanctuary state’ policy (made mostly by executive order), ICE agents can get into jails & prisons, focus their efforts on deporting more violent criminals.”
