Gross Human Rights Violations in Washington State: Enforced Disappearance and Refoulement
By The Center for Human Rights, The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington,
This report reviews local involvement in gross human rights abuses against immigrants, focusing on forced disappearance and refoulement. Its findings reveal that the connections between Washington state and these crimes are broader and deeper than has been previously known.
They are broader because there are many more cases of Washingtonians being subjected to forced disappearance at the hands of the U.S. federal government than was previously known. Thus far we have documented:[1]
seven migrant Washingtonians who were expelled by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to El Salvador’s notorious megaprison CECOT, in violation of a federal court order;[2]
six Washingtonians who were sent by ICE to Guantánamo Bay without access to counsel or information to their families;[3]
one Washingtonian who was expelled by ICE to South Sudan, where he had no personal ties, following attempts to remove him in violation of a federal court order;[4]
two families who were held incommunicado in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) facilities for weeks within our own state;
and a very broad—so broad as to be unmeasurable under current conditions—universe of migrants who are being deported daily without access to any real form of due process, under conditions which may constitute refoulement.
And they are deeper because many more of our institutions, public and private, are involved in facilitating the forced disappearances of our neighbors than was previously known. These include:
Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and King County International Airport (Boeing Field), both of which provide the infrastructure through which deportations happen daily;
Washington State’s Department of Corrections, which collaborates with ICE in the detention of migrants completing a prison sentence;
Signature Aviation, a private company providing fuel and support to private charter flights operating for ICE at King County International Airport;
and the Washington State Investment Board (WSIB), which invests the retirement funds of our public employees in the very businesses that brutalize our neighbors.
Complicity in forced disappearance is not a minor matter. When committed systematically against a civilian population, forced disappearance is considered a crime against humanity under international law. All institutions—federal, state and local; public and private—and all individuals are called to take active measures to avoid complicity in the networks that produce such violations. Our central purpose in publishing this report is to make all Washingtonians witness to what is happening on our watch, in the hopes that we might come together in new ways to stop these abuses.
Seattle: Center for Human Rights, The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington,, 2025.