King County, Washington, is the county that contains Seattle and its surrounding suburbs. This includes the King County Airport (more locally known as Boeing Field), which is run by the county administration and its executive, Dow Constantine.

Dow Constantine, spurred on by Governor Jay Inslee (yeah, that fool who thinks he is running for president) and his declaration of Washington as a “sanctuary state,” decided that the county airport should stop servicing all ICE deportations. Now, these deportations are of people who have already been through the court system and been ordered by a judge to leave the country. Does that matter to Dow Constantine? Nope.

The King County Airport in Seattle had been used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport 34,000 illegal immigrants over the last decade. But after a politically motivated study done by the University of Washington’s Center for Human Rights, which concluded in its report, “the time has come for this work to be done,” County Executive Dow Constantine issued an order pressuring companies that fuel planes, to stop servicing ICE flights or lose their contracts with the county.”

The Federation for American Immigration Reform calls it all-out war against border enforcement.”

“This is taking it to a new level,” said FAIR’s spokesman Ira Mehlman. “Sanctuary policies say that the local jurisdiction won’t cooperate with ICE. Here (Constantine) is taking it a step further and blacklisting companies that do business with ICE. This crosses the line probably into obstruction of Justice.”

ICE operates the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, where illegal immigrants are detained while their cases wind their way through the immigration court system. When deporting through the King County Airport, handcuffed detainees were taken on a short, 40-minute bus ride before boarding a charter flight. Now, ICE is driving detainees three hours to the Yakima Airport.”

Bryan Wilcox, ICE’s acting field operations director in Seattle, said, “state and local efforts thwarting ICE operations serve only to create additional security concerns and add significant delays and costs to U.S. taxpayers.”

Does Constantine care that he’s acting like a thug, threatening companies that work under contract at Boeing Field? Of course not!

The airport, which was deeded to the county by the federal government in the 1940s, gets tens of millions in federal grants every year; part of the deal there is that you can’t discriminate against the federal government.”

In a bit of thuggery, Dow Constantine has told private contractors that if they fuel or service those ICE planes, they will lose county contracts.”

This is mafia-type stuff by Dow the don.”

Dow Constantine won’t talk to the media — he is a coward. Boeing Field CEO John Perrott backed out of his interview with (Fox News reporter Dan) Springer, which is also cowardly and really too bad. I cannot possibly imagine what the other side’s defense would be of this. I would love to know from these guys how we can justify this.”

“John Perrott said in his quote to the Seattle Times that he believes they are on firm legal ground because, he said, they are engaged in ‘just discrimination,’” Springer told me. “In other words, that the federal government is discriminating against illegal immigrants by deporting them, and that there [are] some sort of human rights abuses, but if we prevent them from flying out of our airport, that’s ‘just discrimination.’”.

Because the county cannot outright ban the flights, Constantine and Perrott are instead leaning on the contractors to not work on servicing the ICE planes, with the threat of not having their own contracts renewed. And now, thanks to Dow Constantine, King County is at risk of losing federal grant money. Two can play this game.

The U.S. Department of Transportation Department sent County Executive Constantine what amounts to a cease and desist letter. Responding to Constantine’s executive order, DOT General Counsel Steven Bradbury wrote, “Federal law expressly prohibits the enforcement of any such directive.”

The letter states the 1978 Airline Deregulation Act “specifically bars local governments from prohibiting or restricting particular types of air transportation.” Also, the King County Airport has received $21 million in federal grants since 2012. One condition of the grant money is allowing the federal government usage of the airport.”

Constantine is clearly trying to get around the law by still allowing flights, but putting the screws to the contract companies that would service and fuel the planes. If you have ever wondered why the Seattle area is so screwed up, it’s because these power-hungry Democrats control the area, see themselves as gods in a small kingdom, and then line up to take turns being at the top of the pile. Seattle-area Democrats want to run their kingdom as a free-for-all, because THEY CARE. Oh, and they loathe the Trump administrations. Deportations were totally fine under the Obama administration (because Dow and company didn’t take this stand while Obama was in office), but with Trump as president, it’s time to virtue-signal. And even though I live in the greater area, and I hate to see it, it’s time for the federal government to put its money where its mouth is, and start yanking federal dollars for noncompliance with federal law. We’ll just have to see if Dow Constantine can get re-elected on virtue signaling alone.

Featured image via Pixabay, Pixabay license free for commercial use