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A north Everett resident’s home-security video is drawing scrutiny to federal immigration enforcement tactics in Snohomish County after it captured what appeared to be an Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrest outside her house Monday morning.
Jennifer Gordon, who lives near Everett Community College and the Legion Memorial Golf Course, told HeraldNet.com she recorded roughly five and a half minutes of video showing five or six agents in tactical vests marked “POLICE” with “Immigration and Customs Enforcement” printed underneath. The agents were masked and unidentified, according to the paper’s Sept. 22, 2026 report. In the footage, a man is pulled from a work truck he had arrived in — Gordon said he had been hired to do work on a property nearby — while men can be heard shouting for help in both English and Spanish. One detained man repeatedly says “They don’t have a warrant,” “Please help me” and “I can’t breathe,” HeraldNet reported.
Gordon said agents told her to “stand back” and “stay out of the way” but that “no one ever got aggressive with me.” She also told the paper that before leaving, one officer made a point of photographing her property and house number. Daily Snack News is not naming the man detained in the video; his identity, charges, if any, and immigration status have not been independently confirmed.
Both the Everett Police Department and the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office confirmed to HeraldNet they had no involvement in the operation. EPD said its officers “have a duty to intervene if unlawful force is used,” regardless of which agency is involved. ICE did not confirm its agents carried out the arrest but, per HeraldNet, responded to questions about mask-wearing by calling Washington’s new restrictions on masked law enforcement “despicable.”
State Rep. Julio Cortes, D-Everett, who has co-sponsored legislation barring law enforcement officers from wearing masks during arrests, told HeraldNet he has received numerous reports of ICE activity in south Everett in addition to Monday’s north Everett video. “I don’t have any information specifically from the federal government or anyone really outside of the community that’s posting videos online,” Cortes said. He added: “ICE agents are already breaking, I think, a lot of Civil Rights laws,” a characterization that is Cortes’s own assessment and has not been adjudicated by any court.
Gov. Bob Ferguson signed legislation in March 2026 prohibiting law enforcement officers from wearing masks while conducting official business in Washington state — the law ICE was responding to when it called the restriction “despicable.”
What state and city policy actually say
Washington’s Keep Washington Working Act, passed by the Legislature in 2019, restricts how state and local law enforcement agencies — not federal agents — may engage with civil immigration enforcement. Per the state Attorney General’s office guidance, the law bars local police from asking about or collecting a person’s immigration or citizenship status except when directly tied to investigating a state or local crime, since being undocumented is not itself a crime under state or federal law. Agencies are also barred from sharing nonpublic personal information, such as release dates or addresses, with federal immigration authorities for civil purposes, and officers cannot detain someone solely based on a civil immigration hold or warrant. The law does not apply to ICE or other federal agents themselves — it governs what Washington’s own police and sheriff’s deputies can do.
In Everett specifically, Mayor Cassie Franklin issued Mayoral Directive 2026-01 on Feb. 25, 2026, after community groups sent a letter urging the city to respond to a rise in reported federal immigration activity. The directive reaffirms that Everett police will comply with the Keep Washington Working Act, restricts federal immigration agents from entering non-public areas of city facilities without a warrant, and requires Everett officers responding to a call involving a federal immigration encounter to activate body-worn cameras and route documentation to the mayor’s office and legal department. It also states that Everett officers who witness “egregious excessive force” by federal immigration officers are expected to intervene when safe to do so — consistent with the department’s statement to HeraldNet following Monday’s incident. ICE publicly criticized the Everett directive in a statement posted to social media in early March 2026.
Neither Everett police nor the Sheriff’s Office was present at Monday’s arrest, and neither agency has said whether it has opened any review of the incident. HeraldNet’s report did not include an on-record statement from ICE confirming or describing the specific operation.
