ISLAND COUNTY: Whidbey Island officials express alarm, fear over ICE in unprecedented session
Allyson Ballard reports from a special meeting of the Island County Commissioners on Wed., Jan. 28, 2026, for the Whidbey News-Times. Read the whole story.
Summary by Perplexity AI
Whidbey Island officials held an unusual public safety session to discuss how residents should respond to Immigration and Customs Enforcement amid rising fear after fatal ICE shootings in Minneapolis. Sheriff Rick Felici and Prosecutor Greg Banks acknowledged major uncertainty about ICE’s presence and authority locally but urged residents to “survive the encounter” by complying in the moment and relying on Washington’s courts afterward. Local mayors questioned the safety and justice of compliance, especially for people of color, and pressed for clearer protections. Officials emphasized that local police cannot assist or interfere with ICE but can witness, document, and “clean up” any fallout.
They Said It
“When you look at the temperament of this country right now and you look at the things that are going on, we have general concerns for the citizens that live in our cities,” Oak Harbor Mayor Ronnie Wright said. “Because I have no faith in this federal administration right now. I have no faith in ICE.”
“Whether it’s at a protest, whether it’s on your front steps, whether it’s on a traffic stop, the answer is, use the rule of law in your favor,” Felici said. “Fighting and resisting the agent is not gonna end well for anybody.”
“Rick, ICE isn’t following the rule of law,” Coupeville Mayor Molly Hughes said to the sheriff.
Hughes, Wright and Langley Mayor Kennedy Horstman grilled Felici about law enforcement’s role in protecting citizens. That their questions dealt so heavily in hypothetical situations, Felici explained, made answering them difficult.
“We spend our lives addressing hypotheticals,” Hughes said. “We do emergency planning, that’s addressing hypotheticals. What if there’s an earthquake? What if there’s a tsunami?”
When Banks finally spoke, he pointed out that the governor and state attorney general recently had a press conference about these issues and even they couldn’t answer such questions. He said Felici’s advice to “survive the encounter” was the best guidance. Washington courts, he said, can still be relied upon, and he fears the “powder keg” of a situation in which local law enforcement and the “heavily armed” federal agents use lethal force against each other.
Separately, Felici made the point that whatever “mess” ICE makes, local law enforcement will be responsible for “cleaning up.”
Towards the end of the session, Island County Commissioner Jill Johnson — attending remotely — acknowledged the justice system may be “flawed” but stressed the dangers of escalating ICE encounters. Compliance, she said, is the “wisdom of the table.”
Things got intense when Hughes, although understanding of the logic behind compliance, argued people could still be hurt with compliance — specifically, people of color targeted by ICE.
“We’re talking about people getting hurt, right? There’s different kinds of hurt, and I don’t think that is a skin color-based situation,” he said. “I mean, honestly, look at the people that have been involved in these shootings. They were white people.”
