SEATTLE — The federal government can continue using King County-owned Boeing Field to conduct deportation flights despite county objections, a federal appeals court ruled last week, clearing a possible local impediment to President-elect Donald Trump’s promised mass deportations.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers nine Western states, ruled Friday that King County overstepped its power when it tried to block federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement from using the county-owned airport to conduct deportations.
The ruling, by a three-judge panel, upholds a similar one issued last year by a district-level federal court, and comes as incoming Trump administration officials have yet to specify details or cost but say they intend to deport millions of immigrants lacking legal status.
A King County spokesperson said the county would not seek further appeals.
“The Ninth Circuit’s decision allows a raw assertion of federal power to overcome an expression of local values even absent any actual impact,” Amy Enbysk, a spokesperson for King County Executive Dow Constantine, wrote. “Although King County disagrees with the court’s decision, it will of course follow the court’s dictates.”
Deportation flights have been ongoing at the airport since May 2023, shortly after the district court overruled Constantine’s order attempting to stop the flights. There have been 79 such flights since, including 45 so far this year, said Cameron Satterfield, a county spokesperson.
David Yost, an ICE spokesperson, said the agency uses Boeing Field and McCormick Air Center in Yakima to deport people to other countries and to transfer detainees to other detention facilities in preparation for deportation.
In 2019, under the first Trump administration, Constantine issued an executive order seeking to block the federal government from using King County International Airport (the formal name for Boeing Field) for flights deporting immigrants.
The order targeted private companies that fuel and maintain planes at the airport, ordering that future leases between the county and the companies would prohibit deportation flights.
At the time, county officials said it was likely the first attempt anywhere in the country by local officials to block ICE deportation flights, and they hoped to be “leading the way.”
“Deportations raise deeply troubling human rights concerns which are inconsistent with the values of King County, including separations of families, increases of racial disproportionality in policing, deportations of people into unsafe situations in other countries, and constitutional concerns of due process,” Constantine’s 2019 executive order said.
The federal government, under the Trump administration, sued King County in 2020 and the case continued under the Biden administration. A district court judge in Tacoma ruled last year that King County could not block the flights. King County responded by withdrawing the executive order and replacing it with a more lenient one and also appealed the ruling.
The 9th Circuit, on Friday, ruled Constantine’s initial executive order violated the “intergovernmental immunity doctrine” by interfering with federal government immigration enforcement.
“King County’s Executive Order on its face discriminates against the United States ‘by singling out’ the federal government and its contractors ‘for
unfavorable treatment,’ “ Judge Daniel Bress, a Trump appointee, wrote for the panel.
The court also ruled that King County violated the terms of the agreement under which it reacquired Boeing Field from the federal government.
The federal government took over the airport in 1941, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, part of preparations for deeper involvement in World War II.
When the federal government returned the airport to the county in 1948, it included the condition that the U.S. and “its agents” have the right to use the airport without charge.
King County had argued that, because ICE hires charter companies for the deportation flights, it could move to ban the flights without violating the agreement.
The appellate court, like the district court before it, disagreed.
“ICE charter flights are quite plainly flights of the United States through its agent, Classic Air Charter,” Bress wrote.
