The frigid cold on Monday evening didn’t stop hundreds from gathering outside the Spokane City Hall before the regular city council meeting. Chanting and waving signs, they were there to support a resolution up for a vote that would reaffirm the city’s commitment to a state immigration law that prohibits city staff and law enforcement from collaborating with immigration officials.
The crowd had gathered at the rally before the meeting as the culmination of a community effort, driven by organization Latinos en Spokane (LeS), to get Spokane to support the city’s immigrant community by passing a resolution backing the Keep Washington Working Act (KWWA).
After more than two hours of public comment from both supporters and detractors of the resolution and commentary from the council, the resolution passed by a vote of 5-2, with the council’s conservative members Jonathan Bingle and Michael Cathcart voting against it.
The meeting was one of the most well attended in council members’ memories, with estimated attendance as high as 500 people. Nearly every seat in the chambers was full, so security directed audience members first to the Chase Gallery just outside the chambers. When that filled up, people flowed into the Briefing Center where live video feed of the meeting was pumped in.
Even that wasn’t enough: part of the way through the meeting the council had to take a brief recess and ask folks to leave — there were so many people in the chambers, the Chase Gallery, the Briefing Center and outside the building that the city fire marshall said it violated fire code.
It was also the longest meeting of 2025 so far, with 40 speakers signed up to testify on the resolution.
The majority of public testimony swung in favor of the policy to show support for immigrants, with folks speaking against the way President Donald Trump’s mass deportation policies have already impacted the city’s immigrant population.
Before the meeting, Amy Deras, Community Programs Director for Latinos en Spokane, had said into the megaphone that the resolution was more than “just words on paper.”
“It's a promise,” Deras had said. “A promise to protect our families, our neighbors and our community.”
But Cathcart, one of two votes against the resolution, feared that it was just words, and perhaps words that could draw the ire of Trump’s administration.
“The real issue here is that this resolution is nonbinding. It’s not an ordinance that enacts any sort of law. It doesn’t stop ICE from operating inside the city of Spokane,” Cathcart said. “ICE doesn’t care about our resolution.”
He worried news headlines could create “an immense false sense of security” for immigrants, putting them at heightened risk. Essentially, if people think the city can protect them from ICE, they’ll be sorely disappointed.
The other no vote on the resolution, Bingle, voted no for a different reason: quoting Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet — “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" — he said the nonbinding resolution essentially made Spokane a sanctuary city, even though the word sanctuary does not appear in the resolution’s text. Some public commenters agreed with Bingle, including one who labeled the mysterious lack of the sanctuary city language as “word shenanigans.”
“One of the things I’ve heard is that what this law does is it prohibits law enforcement from enforcing federal immigration law,” Bingle said. “That’s what it is, you can call it whatever you want … it is a sanctuary law.”
Chris Wright, the council’s policy advisor, said “sanctuary city” is not a legal or precise term. And the resolution doesn’t prevent law enforcement from enforcing federal immigration law — the KWWA state law does.
So what does the resolution actually do?
Fast facts
