February 23, 2024 Dena Jensen
[This introduction was corrected with information on March 20, 2024. The corrected section is noted below within the relevant section of the introduction to this series. It is placed in brackets, in italics, with the date that the correction was made.]

It took less than one minute at the end of the Bellingham City Council’s February 12, 2024 regular meeting for Council Members’ final consideration of an ordinance to suspend the City’s Immigration Advisory Board. The ordinance was approved 6-1, with recently elected, first-term City Council Member Jace Cotton casting the only dissenting vote.

It was the third chance those officials had to publicly explore advice that had been given to them about the ordinance by any of the individual immigrants serving in their capacity as members of the IAB or by the IAB as a whole. Council Members didn’t take it.

The City’s now-suspended first board devoted to immigration issues had been operating as an advisory body which Council Members had created through another ordinance passed in 2019. Its originating purpose was to make recommendations related to immigration, to evaluate City data in order to ensure compliance with the Keep Washington Working Act, and to support community involvement related to regional issues and decisions regarding immigration.

Threats to immigrants nationwide

For some national context, the City Council’s February 12, 2024 vote took place four days after Newsweek reported on Neo-Nazi activity in Orlando, Florida, occurring as the 2024 presidential primary season has been getting underway. This week, Tennessee Representative Justin Jones posted a video of the Blood Tribe Neo-Nazis once again marching, this time, through downtown Nashville. They were, in Jones’ words, “talking about Neo-Nazism, talking about deporting folks, and racial hatred.”

Aljazeera had also posted a video of the Nazi march that had been recorded in Nashville where marchers could be heard chanting, “deport all Mexicans,” among other things.

To compare that with some elements of the political and social justice climate in the not too distant past, the Immigration Advisory Board had held its very first meeting on June 23, 2020, three years after the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia where “Neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klansmen and other white supremacists marched through the University of Virginia;” two years after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid targeting workers at Granite Precast in Bellingham; after four years of the brutal immigration actions and policy impacting immigrants locally and nationwide during the Trump presidency; and one month after the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer on May 25, 2020.

Threats to immigrants locally

Local community efforts during that timing – leading up to the formation of the Immigration Advisory Board – sought to address the dangers and threats to the lives and well-being of immigrants locally which was posed by this state of affairs.

Click this link to view posts on Noisy Waters Northwest about community efforts to protect and ensure the well-being of immigrants in our community: https://noisywatersnw.com/tag/advocacy-toward-immigration-board/

Who needs a third vote anyway?

At 00:23:31 in the meeting recording of last week’s City Council meeting, Deputy City Clerk Kelley Goetz read the title of the ordinance to suspend the IAB. By 00:24:13, a motion and second had been made for a third and final vote, a roll call vote had been taken, and Council was ready to move on to Public Comment and Adjournment.

As if that wasn’t quick enough, both of the prominently circulated newspapers in Bellingham announced the Immigration Advisory Board had been suspended even before it happened in a flash on February 12. Both Cascadia Daily News on January 29, 2024 and The Bellingham Herald on February 11, 2024 had respectively reported prior to the City Council’s final vote that the meetings of the IAB had been barred or suspended. Both articles were subsequently “updated.”

According to ordinance rules established by Bellingham’s City Charter, the IAB could not be barred from meeting by the City Council’s ordinance until after the final vote on it by Council on February 12, and Mayor Kim Lund’s approval, objection, or veto of the ordinance within ten days after the vote.

“Probably true, but not necessarily true” ordinance recitals

On January 2, 2024, there had been a preliminary discussion among City Council Members about the suspension ordinance at their reorganization meeting. However, the discussion did not visibly touch on input that IAB members had offered to Council Member Hannah Stone when she had attended recent public and private meetings with those board members before that meeting. No interpretation was provided for the public who attended the Council’s meeting that day.

Following that, and a couple weeks prior to their February 12 meeting, the City Council had engaged in a discussion about the ordinance to suspend the Immigration Advisory Board before the Council’s first vote on it during their January 29, 2024 Committee of the Whole meeting. Even so, with this meeting occurring after a few Council Members, along with Bellingham’s new Mayor Kim Lund, attended the two-hour January 19, 2024 IAB meeting, no effort was made to meaningfully consider suggestions that the IAB had given to City officials about the suspension of their board – except for one thing, and that was done without specific reference to IAB members.

[Correction, March 20, 2024: Upon further reviewing the Letter from IAB Board Members opposing proposed ordinance, it is apparent that Council did take action which relates to two other suggestions contained in that letter. Council did not reference the letter when they made their motions, nor that they were basing their motions on IAB recommendations.

One action was that Council Members Lilliquist and Anderson did make a motion, which Council approved, to “direct the City administration to work with City Council leadership, IAB members, and other parties to create an ad hoc workgroup to evaluate topics that may include, membership, purposes, procedures, processes, and resources to improve the IAB’s effectivesness as an advisory board and increase the IAB’s ability to advise the City on matters that affect immigrant community members.”

The IAB had proposed in their letter:

“Instead of suspending the IAB that we create a body with representatives from the City Council, The Mayor’s office, City Staff, and the IAB tasked with evaluating our joint purpose, goals, and objectives for the IAB, and the level of City resources needed to achieve these goals, and to make any necessary changes to the BMC to make help achieve these goals;”

Additionally, Council Members Lilliquist and Cotton had proposed, “to amend the ordinance to strike language in Section 2. “The terms of the current Immigration Advisory Board Members will continue to run during the suspension.” This amendment was made to the ordinance to suspend the IAB that was passed by the City Council.

The IAB had proposed in their letter:

“If the City does suspend the IAB, that the terms of the current members are also suspended and that they resume when the IAB resumes meeting.”]

In the Immigration Advisory Board’s Letter from IAB Board Members opposing proposed ordinance, they had registered their opposition to the “findings of facts in support” of the suspension of the IAB and made a recommendation to adopt a revised version of the ordinance which they had composed and believed to be “a more complete and accurate representation of the facts.”

Immediately preceding the City Council’s second vote to suspend the Immigration Advisory Board on January 29, Council Member Michael Lilliquist made a motion to strike Section 1 of the ordinance, “Finding of Facts.” That section was the first one to follow what are commonly referred to as the recitals of the ordinance. Recitals are all the statements or clauses in an ordinance preceded by the word “whereas.” Definitions of recitals from various law dictionaries refer to both the factual nature of such items and/or the context they provide for the action being taken.

Council Member Lilliquist’s remarks at 01:43:20 during the recording of the Committee of the Whole’s January 29 conversation, referred to controversy about the recitals related to the Findings of Facts:

“For some ordinances, it’s very important to actually adopt findings of facts following a legal model, where you have factual basis and that’s the basis for your legislation. We don’t need to take that formal step this time. 

“And the reason why I would strike that is that there has been some controversy, and disagreement, and hurt feelings over the exact language in the recitals. If we simply strike the fact that these are ‘findings of fact’ then we don’t have to argue about those facts because now they’re just written documents, probably true, but not necessarily true, right? We don’t have to argue about their truthfulness. We can avoid that controversy. So I would move that we strike section one of the ordinance.”

This amendment to the ordinance was passed unanimously.

Future chapters in this tale will focus on those recitals, adding context to the recitals themselves that was provided by IAB members directly, as well as through documentation of their 4 years of work; the opinions voiced and actions taken by Council Members based on those recitals and how the media reported on that “not necessarily true” material; and where those recitals came from, starting with the first place to which they can be traced in public records.

Coming next: What IAB members had to say.