The Thurston County Courthouse
By Sara Gentzler
The Olympian
Thurston County courts now have policies to reference when armed law enforcement officers enter a courthouse facility.
Superior Court Administrator Pam Hartman Beyer confirmed the policies were created in response to an arrest made by plainclothes U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in June outside the county courthouse complex. The incident has raised concerns in the local criminal justice community that it could keep people from seeking county services, reporting crimes, and attending court.
The policies were officially put in place Nov. 1 for the county’s courts to use until the state Attorney General’s Office releases a comprehensive model policy that’s due in May, which the courts will then consider.
Advocates who sent recommendations to the courts say the interim policies don’t go far enough.
Interim Policies
Superior Court Presiding Judge Christine Schaller foreshadowed the policies at an “after-action” meeting in September where county officials and criminal justice stakeholders discussed the June arrest. She said the protocol, which was in progress at the time, would guide the courts in situations like that arrest, so “all law enforcement agencies are treated equally when they come into our courthouse.”
Stakeholders from Thurston County’s Superior Court, District Court, Prosecutor’s Office, and Sheriff’s Office took part in creating the interim policies, according to Hartman Beyer, who was part of the group.
The interim policies include a requirement for armed law enforcement officers to tell courthouse security whether they’re at the courthouse on official or personal business and gives guidance depending on the answer: If it’s personal business, weapons will be properly secured before they enter. If they’re there to make an arrest, the court’s “expectation policy” comes into play.
Local law enforcement agencies already have received the document stating the court’s expectations, Hartman Beyer told The Olympian. Out-of-county and state officers will be given the information sheet as they pass through security.
The expectations include that no arrests shall happen in any of the county’s courtrooms unless “directly ordered by the judicial officer presiding” and that “arrests shall be discouraged” in county courthouses unless “public safety is at immediate risk.”
The overarching policy mostly provides direction for courthouse security officers. It states they “shall not take the lead in making an arrest” and can assist other officers with an arrest “only when it presents an immediate danger to the public, staff or the officer(s),” aside from two specific exceptions.
And it gives guidance on communication: Court staff and security officers will provide the same information to law enforcement and the general public, for example. Security officers who assist in an arrest have to complete an incident report promptly, and they need to “immediately notify the security supervisor” of the incident, which sets off a chain of communication.
What’s Not in the Interim Policies
“Many courts are grappling with how to address the current circumstances,” lawyer and advocate Annie Benson wrote in an email to The Olympian. “This is the only policy I am aware of issued by a court in direct response to ICE arrests.”
Benson is a Senior Directing Attorney with the Washington Defender Association and one of the leaders of a community-led statewide advocacy coalition working on the issue of arrests such as the one in Thurston. The coalition submitted policy recommendations for Thurston County courts to consider.
What came out of the courts looks very different from those recommendations, Benson said
“I do believe that Thurston County judges and other officials were deeply concerned about ICE arrests at their courthouses last summer,” Benson wrote to The Olympian. “Unfortunately, the November policy issued by the court does not appear to reflect these concerns. Nor does it reflect the even deeper concerns of impacted community members who will remain too afraid to come to court. Given what is at stake for non-citizens, their families and our courts, we were hoping they would have chosen to put a more robust policy in place.”
Peter Kardas is a founding member of the local group Strengthening Sanctuary Alliance (SSA), which recently added “Alliance” to its name, and is a long-term member of its law enforcement/ICE working group that “meets with local and county law enforcement and judicial officers to discuss ways in which they can minimize interactions with ICE that would put immigrants at risk.”
SSA also sent policy preferences to Thurston County to consider after the June arrest. Kardas characterized the court’s new protocol as “an extremely narrow policy” that focuses on what happens inside a courtroom.
The June arrest occurred outside the courthouse, when a man from El Salvador left a hearing in which he was the defendant.
Video surveillance footage shows a presumed ICE agent presenting what looks like a badge to courthouse security and having conversations with a security officer before the arrest. The security officer reported that he talked to the ICE agent while inside a courtroom.
“There’s nothing in this policy that would’ve changed anything that happened on June 20, I don’t think,” Kardas told The Olympian. “There were a lot of things they could’ve done, as you can see from our document, that they just didn’t address.”
As an interim policy, Kardas said he thinks this was perhaps just “to get something on paper” that would “prevent, shall we say, the most dramatic arrest they could make in a courtroom.”
When asked via email whether the policies would have changed the way court staff reacted to the June arrest, Hartman Beyer said the court “cannot speculate.”
Other angles addressing courthouse arrests
The Attorney General’s model policies for “limiting immigration enforcement to the fullest extent possible consistent with federal and state law” at several places, including courthouses, are due by May 21, under the Keep Washington Working Act.
In the meantime, Thurston County’s Board of County Commissioners recently indicated it likely won’t draft a policy that covers county property outside the courthouses. Commissioner Tye Menser expressed at a Dec. 3 work session that, even if the county took an aggressive stance and “prohibited” arrests, he thought it would be “meaningless” to ICE.
Prosecutor Jon Tunheim said in September that his office was considering a lawsuit similar to an ongoing case in Massachusetts that argued ICE’s directive authorizing civil arrests of people attending court on official business is illegal.
But Chief Civil Deputy Prosecutor Elizabeth Petrich told The Olympian this week that the county will not file an independent lawsuit. Thurston County was “involved in helping the state put together various declarations in support of their lawsuit,” Petrich said. And it “deferred to the state’s decision to move forward without Thurston County.”
Also at the state level, there’s a General Rule open for public comment that would prohibit civil arrests without a judicial arrest warrant or judicial order for arrest while a person is inside a Washington court, as well as while traveling to or from a court to participate in court or access services.
Benson, who’s also a spokesperson for the proposed General Rule, said that, after public comment closes Feb. 3, the state Supreme Court will vote whether to pass the rule as-is, amend and pass it, or vote against it becoming a rule.
“I think that the folks in the advocacy community along with other stakeholders have been trying to throw everything at this that we have, to stop this travesty that’s happening on the ground,” Benson told The Olympian.
