Millions of my fellow workers are afraid. Afraid to go to work, afraid to take their kids to school. Afraid to live the life they deserve. Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement are to blame.
Labor must lead in this crucial and dire moment. Right here in Seattle, workers are being abducted by masked federal goons while the police stand by and watch. City Hall is still poised to expand local and federal law enforcement’s ability to surveil and kidnap people. Mayor Katie Wilson has the power to deny ICE a weapon in their war against the people of this city. She urgently needs to exercise that power.
Last year, the Seattle City Council’s pro-business majority voted to expand a controversial video surveillance system. They did so even in the face of massive public outcry, opposition from privacy and immigration advocates and the ACLU, and a dire warning from the city’s own Office of Civil Rights. These cameras, which are already on Aurora Avenue, Third Avenue downtown and in the Chinatown International District, are about to be expanded to Capitol Hill’s nightlife area and the Central District around Garfield High School.
Advocates of the expanded surveillance, including outgoing Seattle Police Guild president Mike Solan and former Mayor Bruce Harrell, claim the technology is needed to reduce violent crime. The evidence tells a different story.
Seattle’s Office of Civil Rights warns in a report that this kind of surveillance does not reliably reduce violent crime, and in fact is likely to increase racial and economic inequality, especially when the technology is concentrated in neighborhoods such as the CID, Capitol Hill and the Central District. The report states, “When these surveillance systems are disproportionately deployed in neighborhoods where communities who are Black, Indigenous, People of Color, low-income, disabled, and 2SLGBTQ+ live, work, and gather, the result is a policy feedback loop that stigmatizes these communities as ‘concentrated crime’ areas.”
The report goes on to cast serious doubt on proponents’ claims of reduced violent crime, stating that “Scientific and peer-reviewed research further underscore the limits of CCTV (closed-circuit television) and RTCCs (Real Time Crime Centers). The peer-reviewed literature in law, social science, and behavioral science does not support claims that these surveillance technologies reduce ‘persistent felony crimes,’ ‘serious and violent crimes’ and/or ‘gun violence and human trafficking.’ “
The report, issued in August of last year, also raises the issue of the potential for exploitation of Seattle’s CCTV system by federal authorities, a concern that has only grown more urgent in 2026. The Office of Civil Rights references a report on a similar system in Washington, D.C., that is used by the Trump administration to collect data on perceived enemies of the state.
It’s not a matter of if ICE or other federal agencies access our local surveillance technology to track and kidnap our immigrant neighbors and punish dissent, but a matter of when. We cannot simply wait. We must act.
When our new mayor was campaigning last year, she echoed many of these concerns and spoke out against expanding video surveillance, citing Medicaid and Department of Licensing data that ICE had already exploited. However, since taking office almost a month ago, Mayor Wilson has taken no action to deactivate the system or even halt expansion, and has made no commitment to do so.
This is unacceptable. Community members have continued to urge the mayor and City Council to halt the expansion of video surveillance in the name of keeping the people of Seattle safe from ICE’s terror. While Seattle has yet to experience the scale of occupation that our friends in Minneapolis are enduring and resisting, it is only a matter of time before that becomes our reality. And ICE is already here, snatching people off the street, including several incidents along Aurora Avenue, where these cameras are already in operation.
A broad coalition of workers came together last year to take on the corporate political establishment and elect Katie Wilson to the mayor’s office. I’m calling on my fellow workers to hold the mayor to her word and demand that she deny the Trump administration a powerful tool in his racist dragnet. Turn the damn cameras off.
