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Yahoo
18 hours ago
- Yahoo
WA farmworkers fear reporting sexual harassment to federal agency under Trump
Marlen, right, a peer trainer for the BASTA Coalition of Washington, and Isabel Reyes-Paz, the coalition's director, lead trainings primarily for Mexican immigrant women about sexual harassment of farmworkers in the Yakima Valley, an agricultural region in Central Washington. (Photo by Jake Parrish/InvestigateWest) Marlen, a 35-year-old mother from Mexico, knows what farmworkers like her are supposed to do if they're sexually harassed on the job: Tell the harasser to stop, document it, then report it to company leadership. If none of that works, get legal help. This could mean filing a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the government agency responsible for enforcing federal employment discrimination laws. Marlen leads training sessions in Spanish for other Latina farmworkers in central Washington about sexual harassment, following guidance drawn from the EEOC. In agricultural areas like Yakima County, where more than half the population is Hispanic or Latino, many victims are immigrants who speak little English, while many perpetrators are supervisors with the power to punish those who report them or refuse their demands. So at the end of 2023, when Marlen's supervisor at a large fruit farm in the Yakima Valley started leering at her, making crude comments about women's bodies like 'nice camel legs,' and filming her as she stood on a ladder cutting tree branches, she reported it to a manager, she said. Then she was assigned to more physically demanding jobs, such as digging holes in rocky ground and moving heavy wooden posts — work that typically only men would do and that isolated her from co-workers, according to her documentation of the incidents. 'It makes me feel like it was wrong of me to report him,' Marlen said in Spanish. She asked to go by her first name for this article because she still works for the company. 'Like I made a mistake, when the one who made the mistake was him.' But if things get worse for Marlen, she probably wouldn't report it to the EEOC, the commission that for nearly three decades has defended immigrant farmworkers like her against workplace sexual harassment and abuse — no matter their immigration status. 'What are they going to do with the information we give them? Are they going to help us or make things worse for us?' she said. 'I feel like — not just in cases of harassment, but with anything happening with someone right now — people won't report it because of fear.' As the Trump administration's immigration crackdown reaches into agricultural communities across the country and the EEOC shifts priorities to align with those of the president, it's unclear to these farmworkers and their attorneys whether the agency will continue to protect them. In one of several actions contributing to a growing fear that the EEOC is being politicized by President Trump, the commission's Trump-appointed acting chair, Andrea Lucas, announced in February that the commission will help deter illegal migration by enforcing employment antidiscrimination laws against employers that 'illegally prefer non-American workers.' And in the name of protecting women from workplace sexual harassment, Lucas also vowed to roll back the Biden administration's 'gender identity agenda.' The commission then moved to dismiss several lawsuits against companies alleging discrimination against transgender and nonbinary workers. The commission declined to comment when InvestigateWest asked if workers can continue filing complaints without fear that their immigration status will be used against them. 'The EEOC was playing a very critical role in being able to protect survivors of workplace sexual harassment, including egregious rape. The sense that we're getting is that they're no longer going to be that kind of an agency,' said Blanca Rodriguez, deputy director of advocacy for Columbia Legal Services, a nonprofit legal aid program in Washington. 'They're going to be an agency that immigrant communities are going to fear. And that is not only going to do harm during the Trump administration, but for years to come.' While it's unclear whether the federal commission would in fact share people's immigration information with other agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the uncertainty alone is deterring farmworkers from reporting sexual harassment and abuse to government and legal organizations, according to attorneys and advocates in the region. The Northwest Justice Project, a nonprofit law firm that represents low-income people in Washington, recorded 16 cases involving sexual harassment of a farmworker in 2024. It had 21 such cases in 2023 and 17 in 2022. So far in 2025, as Trump returned to the White House, the firm has recorded only two cases (although the Northwest Justice Project cautioned this could be an undercount because the data is not yet fully entered in its system). These cases may also take a back seat as the Washington Attorney General's Office, an alternative to the federal government for combating sexual violence against farmworkers, spends more of its limited resources pushing back against the Trump administration's actions, leaving these workers with few — if any — options for recourse. The state Attorney General's Office has sued the Trump administration more than a dozen times over issues like birthright citizenship, gender-affirming care for youth, education funding and health funding. 'It's a terrible outcome if we have to spend all of our energy responding to the federal government, and thus leaving workers in Washington without any protection because the EEOC may not do its job,' said the office's Civil Rights Division Chief Colleen Melody. 'Resources are a major concern, and burnout will be a huge concern if we don't get additional resources to help do this work.' In 1991, a federal court case in California shaped the future of undocumented workers' rights. In a victory for immigrant rights, the judge ruled that undocumented workers are covered under Title VII, a section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibits discrimination against employees based on national origin, race, sex and more. The ruling opened the door for millions of immigrant workers to file discrimination charges with the EEOC. For William Tamayo, a now-retired attorney who represented the plaintiff, a woman from Mexico, it was just the beginning of a trailblazing career protecting immigrants from sex-based discrimination. When Tamayo joined the EEOC as a regional attorney in 1995, the agency had never before sued an agricultural company over sexual harassment of a farmworker. 'Largely, the presence of the federal government was the immigration service. So I had to figure out, 'How would they trust me and trust the EEOC?'' Tamayo said. 'It was really hard work.' His first major breakthrough came in 1999. One of the nation's largest lettuce growers, Tanimura & Antle, settled a case with the EEOC involving a single mother from El Salvador who said that a hiring official forced her to have sex to get a seasonal job picking crops. Since then, the EEOC has brought more than 50 agricultural companies to court over such allegations, primarily under Tamayo's leadership, leading to improved sexual harassment trainings and over $35 million awarded to farmworkers throughout the country. This doesn't include the many cases resolved through mediation and settlements before a lawsuit was filed. Allegations range from pervasive verbal harassment to violent assaults: A woman whose supervisor held pruning shears to her throat and repeatedly raped her at a tree farm in Oregon's Willamette Valley. Managers and employees at a California raisin company who, for over a decade, groped and demanded sex from female workers. A pregnant woman whose manager, after she rejected his almost daily sexual advances at a fruit packing warehouse in central Washington, fired her husband and assigned her to lift 40-pound boxes without help. In most cases, the women who reported sexual violence also reported consequences for doing so — they lost their jobs, were demoted, isolated from co-workers. Sexual harassment and retaliation are illegal under federal and state law. Yet studies estimate that 65% to 80% of farmworker women in the U.S. agricultural industry experience workplace sexual harassment. The nationwide issue, spotlighted by a 2013 PBS Frontline documentary, 'Rape in the Fields,' has been especially scrutinized in California, Washington and Oregon, which have among the highest employment levels in agricultural industries of all states, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The commission's commitment to protecting people's immigration information is key to farmworkers' ability to speak out about sexual abuse and harassment, according to Tamayo, who retired from the EEOC in 2021 after 20 years as a regional attorney and another six years as district director overseeing investigations across the western United States. 'Certainly, if the EEOC started asking about immigration status, that would be the end of these farmworker cases,' he said. 'It has nothing to do with whether she was raped or not.' Attorneys like Rodriguez and Michael Meuter, vice president of legal affairs and general counsel at California Rural Legal Assistance, say their farmworker clients in Washington and California are now deciding not to file sexual harassment charges with the commission. The level of fear among immigrant clients is unmatched even compared to the first Trump administration when anti-immigrant rhetoric escalated, they say. 'I think during the last administration, it was harder to get cases approved for litigation. But I think partly because Bill Tamayo — people who care about immigrant workers like him — were still at the EEOC, I still saw the EEOC conduct investigations,' Rodriguez said. 'Things are completely different now. There is no trust at all in the EEOC.' Despite the successes that the EEOC had under Tamayo's leadership, filing complaints with the commission has never been a silver bullet. Strict filing deadlines, language barriers and fear of reporting have long stood in the way of farmworkers facing sexual harassment on the job, attorneys say. Of 8,191 sexual harassment charges resolved through the EEOC in fiscal year 2024, 26.7% were closed for administrative reasons like untimeliness, according to the commission's enforcement and litigation statistics. Nearly half (47%) were dismissed because the commission didn't find reasonable cause to support the discrimination claim. In Oregon, the EEOC hasn't litigated a farmworker sexual harassment case since 2013, court records show. Reporting to the commission, however, can still prove beneficial because it preserves workers' Title VII rights — they receive a 'Right to Sue' notice when the agency closes its investigation, enabling them to file their own Title VII lawsuits. In states with stronger worker protections like Washington, California and Oregon, farmworkers can instead take complaints to their state governments, an option that might feel safer for immigrants who distrust the current federal administration. But those routes have limitations as well. In Washington, for example, the Washington State Human Rights Commission enforces state law prohibiting sexual harassment. While the state commission itself doesn't bring cases to court, it can negotiate agreements with companies and refer cases to the state Attorney General's Office. 'We want every farmworker — regardless of immigration status, job type, or background — to know that they have the right to live and work free from sexual harassment and discrimination,' said Washington State Human Rights Commission Executive Director Andreta Armstrong in an email statement to InvestigateWest. But workers have just a six-month window from the date of the harm to file a complaint with the state commission, and a backlog of cases means that complaints can take years to be investigated. Of 44 sexual harassment complaints against agricultural companies received by the Washington commission since 2015, just eight ended in resolutions through settlements or agreements with their employers, according to InvestigateWest's review of data provided by the agency. Nearly 70% of cases were closed for administrative reasons or after the commission found 'no reasonable cause.' Another avenue that has proven committed to combating sexual violence against farmworkers — the Washington Attorney General's Office — is also narrowing under the Trump administration. Since launching its civil rights unit in 2015, the office has sued five different agricultural companies on behalf of farmworkers who alleged sexual harassment or sexual abuse on the job. Although state law protects everyone from sexual harassment, regardless of immigration or citizenship status, many farmworkers still fear that coming forward may put them at risk for attention by immigration officials, said Melody, the office's civil rights division chief. This fear has been 'noticeably true' since the 2024 election, Melody added. 'Witnesses tell us that they have a story to tell, but they're afraid and unwilling to come forward and tell it,' she said. 'They may have family members who are impacted. They may have colleagues who are impacted, and they fear that coming forward may expose any of those people to retribution.' For immigrant farmworkers who are weighing the risks of speaking out, Melody recommends they ask questions like: Will my immigration status be necessary for this investigation? Will it be shared? With whom will it be shared? 'In the Washington State Attorney General's Office, the answer is, 'We almost always don't need to know, and we don't share it with anyone,'' she said. 'I'm not sure what the answer is at the EEOC right now.' On a Saturday morning in May, Marlen gathered with seven other women in a classroom in Sunnyside, a small city in the heart of the Yakima Valley. Over a table of tamales and coffee, they painted bandanas for the BASTA Coalition of Washington, which provides sexual harassment trainings for farmworkers in the state. They filled the white cloth with messages in Spanish and English like, 'Farmworker women's voices are key!' The women, who each found agricultural work in central Washington after leaving Mexico, spoke about how to weigh the importance of reporting sexual harassment against people's fear of losing their jobs or being deported for doing so. Marlen said the harassment she experienced in the apple orchards has improved recently, after she took some time off from work for a family matter. A few months ago, when she was being isolated from her co-workers in what she believes was retaliation for reporting her supervisor, she would've said she regretted reporting the harassment. But now, despite the risks, she stands by her decision. 'There comes a time when you get overwhelmed and say, 'Why did I report it? I should've just kept quiet,'' Marlen said. 'But if tomorrow it happens to my daughter, I feel like no — someone has to make the change.' That decision, however, may not be right for everyone. BASTA, which means 'enough' in Spanish, currently lists the EEOC as a resource for workers facing sexual harassment. The coalition's director, Isabel Reyes-Paz, said they might need to reconsider that recommendation, or at least provide a caveat: 'We don't know what's going to happen with the current administration. We can't guarantee that your legal status information is protected or not,' Reyes-Paz said. The coalition is also grappling with federal funding cuts, as grants that it had relied on to grow — like those administered by the Department of Labor to support women's employment — are being slashed. 'What are we going to do?' one woman said in Spanish at the meeting in May. 'How are we going to encourage them to seek help if we're also thinking the same thing? We're all afraid.' InvestigateWest ( is an independent news nonprofit dedicated to investigative journalism in the Pacific Northwest. Reporter Kelsey Turner can be reached at kelsey@ or 503-893-2501.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Yahoo
Renewed investigation leads to criminal charges against wife of Portland identity theft victim
Danielle Del Prado thumbs through bank documents and credit reports that track where her wife allegedly used her Social Security number to open accounts and borrow loans. Like many victims of identity theft, she can only turn to civil court to seek justice, because spousal identity theft is rarely prosecuted. (Amanda Loman/InvestigateWest) This story was originally published by InvestigateWest, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to change-making investigative journalism. Sign up for their Watchdog Weekly newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. A Multnomah County grand jury indicted the wife of a Portland woman on identity theft and forgery charges this month, a reversal after Portland police dropped its investigation last year because of a 'lack of tangible leads.' Laura McCabe faces seven felony charges related to alleged identity theft against her wife, Danielle Del Prado, who told InvestigateWest her story in September after the criminal investigation stalled. At that time, law enforcement and the Multnomah County District Attorney's Office said legal complexities and limited resources were the main barriers to investigating Del Prado's case. Pat Dooris, spokesperson for the District Attorney's Office, said collaboration with an Oregon Department of Justice financial crimes investigator was critical to moving the case forward. Del Prado said the investigator contacted her just five days after InvestigateWest's story highlighted the barriers victims like her face when seeking prosecution against the spouses they say used their identity fraudulently. 'I was elated,' she said. 'I said, 'Finally, somebody's listening.'' Michael Korcek, the investigator, played a key role in gathering information via subpoenas and bank records, Dooris said. Korcek and a Department of Justice spokesperson declined to comment, citing the criminal case. Korcek and Del Prado are listed as the only names on the grand jury witness list. Del Prado said she also turned over hundreds of pages of her financial records, which she had pulled from banks across the country, trying to hunt down every application that used her Social Security number, sometimes with her name and other times with McCabe's. McCabe, who now lives in Montana, did not respond to two requests for comment by email. A day after the indictment was filed, she was arrested in Billings and held in the Yellowstone County Detention Facility, jail records showed. She was released after posting bond. Now, Portland authorities are preparing to ask Gov. Tina Kotek to extradite McCabe to Oregon to face the charges. 'The paperwork is underway,' Dooris said. Defendants who face extradition have a right to contest the process, though some waive their right to do so. McCabe has not waived her right, Dooris said. Del Prado said she discovered the identity theft in February 2023, when someone from the fraud department of Gesa Credit Union in Washington left her several frantic voicemails, trying to verify applications for a loan and a line of credit in her name. Del Prado had been abroad and did not apply for the loans, she said. When she started examining her credit report, Del Prado found close to 50 institutions had done hard checks on her credit for dozens of other loans and lines of credit. She had never heard of some of them. By now, Del Prado said she has found unauthorized applications totaling more than $417,000, including $31,350 in loans and lines of credit that were approved. Even as Del Prado compiled her records and communications with McCabe, when she approached police in late 2023 and early 2024, she was told that the couple's divorce case, filed last March, was the best place for her to work out her claims. 'Often, a civil resolution is sought because it's challenging to prove there wasn't some kind of verbal agreement and the case may require forensic accountants and more resources than police or the district attorney's office can provide,' said Terri Wallo Strauss, Portland police spokesperson. Criminal identity theft cases involving spouses remain rare, according to experts. According to the national Identity Theft Resource Center, an organization that provides resources to prevent and recover from identity theft, just 4% of victims of identity misuse in 2023 named ex-spouses or partners as the offending party. Kevin Demer, senior deputy district attorney in Multnomah County, said through a spokesperson that identity theft is 'not often charged as a criminal matter between spouses.' Del Prado said she pushed for a criminal case because McCabe is suing her for financial support under the affidavit that Del Prado signed to sponsor McCabe for a green card. Del Prado is also suing McCabe for $6.2 million for claims of identity theft, emotional distress and other damages. That lawsuit is ongoing.
Yahoo
29-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Idaho's Owyhee County joins ICE agreement to enforce immigration law
Eddie Melendrez, a Chicano artist, speaks in a megaphone while showcasing his mural representing the United Farmworkers of America, a labor union that advocates for farmworker rights. Melendrez, and nearly 100 others, protested President Donald Trump's immigration policies in front of the Idaho State Capitol in Boise on Feb. 7, 2025. (Mia Maldonado/Idaho Capital Sun) This story was first published by InvestigateWest on April 25, 2025. Sheriff's deputies in a western Idaho county will soon be able to stop and interrogate any person they believe to be in the country without authorization. In February, Owyhee County Sheriff Larry Kendrick signed his county up for an Immigration and Customs Enforcement program that was discontinued in 2012 following multiple instances of racial profiling from participating law enforcement agencies. After taking office earlier this year, President Donald Trump reinstated the program, which President Barack Obama had halted. Under the program, called the 287(g) task force model, local police officers are trained to work as ICE agents, acting as a 'force multiplier' for ICE, according to its website. Designated officers will be able to stop and question people they believe to be in the country illegally and process them for federal immigration violations if they are also arrested on state charges. Trump has encouraged widespread participation from law enforcement agencies across the country to help enforce his mass deportation efforts. Idaho Gov. Brad Little also issued an executive order in February that asked local law enforcement agencies to consider entering into the 287(g) programs with ICE. The Owyhee County Sheriff's Office is the first agency in Idaho to have this kind of task force agreement with ICE. It went into effect Feb. 19, according to a copy of the agreement obtained by InvestigateWest. But Kendrick said his officers have not gone through training or begun participating yet in the program. Owyhee County has just 12 full-time and two part-time deputies. Kendrick said a sergeant and two deputies will likely make up the task force. Under the program, ICE pays for any new technology needed, but all other expenses will be paid by the sheriff's office. That includes salaries, benefits, overtime and local transportation. Previous law enforcement agencies have ended agreements due to the added costs. The 287(g) program refers to Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act passed by Congress in 1996. The section authorizes ICE to tap state and local law enforcement officers for some components of immigration enforcement. Kendrick said the county's participation in the federal program is mostly meant to acknowledge support for Trump in Owyhee County. 'My constituents are all very conservative, and I'm conservative,' he said. 'I support Trump. I support his policies. So I joined to get on board with this simply because that is what my constituents expect. That's just supporting the Trump administration, which I do very, very much.' But the program's history of abuses concerns many immigration attorneys and advocates. 'I think it is going to reduce trust in the police, reduce the reporting of crimes,' said Nikki Ramirez-Smith, a partner and immigration attorney at Ramirez-Smith Law in Nampa. 'Nobody's going to want to talk. Because if you witness a crime where normally you would come forward and testify, are you really going to go talk to ICE? That's like being sent into the ICE building. I think the police need some distance from ICE if they want to do police work, which is their job, is to work with victims and perpetrators.' Kendrick said the agreement doesn't mean deputies will target people for immigration enforcement who aren't already under investigation for criminal activity. He said it will allow officers to add immigration charges to people who are arrested for drug trafficking. 'The purpose isn't to go out and look for illegals,' Kendrick said, referring to people who are in the country without authorization. 'Here's the thing, we have three dairies in our county, and the dairies were here even before me, and, yeah, there's probably some illegals working there, but we're not after them. We're after the bad guys.' Attorneys like Smith-Ramirez worry agreements like this alone damage the department's relationship with the community. 'The current political climate of fear has led, already, to a level of distrust of law enforcement,' Smith-Ramirez said. 'The police departments rely on relationships to get people to talk, to get people to report crimes, to get people to trust them. And doing something like this is counterproductive.' A study from Texas A&M University found that law enforcement agencies who had not signed 287(g) task force agreements — but were geographically close to another agency — were likely to engage in the same racial profiling that the participating agencies engaged in. The study found the state highway patrol in North Carolina and South Carolina were more likely to stop Latino drivers than white drivers. Research like that concerns Smith-Ramirez who said Owyhee County has a significant number of Latino farmworkers who she worries could be caught up in the system. 'Owyhee County has a huge farming population, which means you've got a lot of immigrant workers who are terrified to go to work,' she said. 'They're scared to leave the house. Their kids are scared for their parents to go outside or do anything. I think it's only going to get worse once they start doing this.' In 2011, a federal government investigation found that under the task force model, deputies in Arizona's Maricopa County racially profiled Latino residents for immigration enforcement and conducted unlawful searches, detentions and arrests of Latinos. A year later, federal authorities found that deputies in North Carolina's Alamance County, who also operated as task force agents under the 287(g) agreement, were unfairly arresting Latinos and had set up checkpoints in Latino neighborhoods and pulled over Latino drivers for traffic violations 10 times more often than non-Latino drivers. Both agencies had the 287(g) agreements revoked. 'If this is happening, I would be hesitant to report a crime myself,' said Neal Dougherty, partner and immigration attorney at Smith-Ramirez Law. 'I would be hesitant to advise my clients to report crimes to the Owyhee sheriff if I thought they were operating as ICE.' While Owyhee is the only Idaho county with an agreement to be trained as ICE agents, a different kind of agreement under the 287(g) program can allow local jurisdictions to hold ICE detainees in jails and to serve immigration-related warrants. Both kinds of agreements under the 287(g) program have grown dramatically under Trump. According to reporting from the Markup, 133 law enforcement agencies in 21 states had a form of the 287(g) agreement before the election. Earlier this month, 300 agencies in 38 states had them. In Idaho, three counties have the 287(g) agreements to hold ICE detainees or serve immigration warrants: Owyhee County, Power County and Gooding County. The Gooding and Power agreements have been in place since 2020. It is unclear if any other counties in Idaho will join the 287(g) program. Even without formal agreements, some sheriffs in Idaho have defined their own process for immigration enforcement. In Kootenai County, as InvestigateWest previously reported, deputies shared the immigration statuses of people who they encountered who were not being investigated for any state crimes. Idaho State Police Lt. Col. Fritz Zweigart said during a media briefing that the state police have been looking into the task force model, but 'right now, we're working so well with our federal partners that we don't necessarily need to sign into a written agreement.' Immigration enforcement is the sole duty of the federal government, according to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, and local police may assist under federal direction. Without a 287(g) agreement, it is illegal for local police to serve federal immigration warrants and to investigate people's immigration statuses. Gov. Little has encouraged more coordination with ICE under 287(g). 'To the fullest extent of the law, all State agencies with law enforcement … authority must consider formal procedures and agreements to assist the federal government in the enforcement of immigration law, including agreements under Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act,' his executive order said. eo-2025-03 InvestigateWest ( is an independent news nonprofit dedicated to investigative journalism in the Pacific Northwest. A Report for America corps member, reporter Rachel Spacek can be reached at rachel@ SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
14-04-2025
- Yahoo
Washington's Yakima County represents breaking point in state's public defender crisis
A defendant with no available public defender to represent them waits for their court hearing to begin at the Yakima County Jail on Tuesday, March 25, 2025 in Yakima, Wash. (Photo by Jake Parrish/InvestigateWest) Last summer, Robert Dale Root was charged with violating a no-contact order to stay away from his partner. Unable to afford an attorney and facing a dwindling roster of Yakima County public defenders, Root waited three months for a public defender to represent him for the felony charge. His partner repeatedly asked to lift the order, to no avail, as Root posted bail twice — before landing back in jail for violating the order each time. He took off work for three arraignment hearings, but he showed up to the hearings without legal representation, only for his arraignment to be rescheduled for a later date. The attorney he was finally assigned met with him just once, complained of being flooded with other cases and left the office before Root's case was resolved, about seven months after his initial arrest. He's since been assigned another attorney and sits in the county jail awaiting a trial date set for April 21. Root's wait in the bottlenecked queue for counsel in Yakima isn't unusual. In fact, it was common last summer, according to court records reviewed by InvestigateWest. One woman arrested the same month as Root and facing a litany of charges related to theft and drug possession was arraigned eight times and waited five months for a public defender. Another defendant, charged with assault, waited five months. Another appeared at four arraignments without a public defender until his case was eventually dismissed. The list goes on. 'It's not our fault they don't have enough attorneys,' said Root, a 23-year-old descendant of the Yakama Nation. 'We have to sit here and try to await trial because we're innocent until proven guilty. … It's just wrong.' Lags in Yakima County's court system reflect a breaking point in the state's public defense system. A shortage of public defenders leaves indigent defendants waiting weeks, sometimes months for an attorney. These defendants often are left in the dark, oblivious to when or from whom they will have legal representation. In Washington, the issue varies by county — namely due to the state's lack of financial support and the counties' differing models of service. 'The Legislature has slowly choked the life out of local budgets,' said Derek Young, interim director of the Washington State Association of Counties. 'We can't afford proper staffing levels.' In what some would call a worst-case scenario, Benton County released five criminal defendants, with charges including rape and other violent crimes, from jail last year because it lacked defense attorneys to represent them. 'That's where their constitutional right becomes now a public safety problem,' Young said. 'The date we've been warning (the state) about for a long time has arrived. It'll start in those places that have the hardest time recruiting attorneys.' The problem is particularly acute in Yakima County. The county is both being sued by defendants and is suing the state, along with several other counties and the Washington State Association of Counties, for failing to provide adequate funding for public defense services. Young said the decision is in appeal, and he expects another hearing in early May. The director of the Yakima County Department of Assigned Counsel, Paul Kelley, declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation. On Sept. 30, five plaintiffs who languished in Yakima County's jail without an attorney, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, filed a class-action lawsuit claiming that Yakima County failed to appoint counsel and unlawfully restrained those without legal representation. The plaintiffs faced 'onerous conditions of release, and repeated court hearings — where they [were] forced to face the court without counsel — that [did] not move their case forward,' according to the complaint. That suit came on the heels of a case in August 2024 in which Superior Court Judge Richard Bartheld declared that the defense shortage in Yakima — exacerbated by the departure of four attorneys, roughly a quarter of all of its public defenders — had reached 'a crisis level.' In that court case, a woman charged with driving under the influence had lost her attorney and waited three more months for a new one. To prevent the case being dismissed, Bartheld went as far as to amend court rules, declaring that the time spent reappointing counsel would not count against trial deadlines. 'When relief is not offered through executive or legislative action and the Supreme Court fails to address these issues in its rulemaking authority, it produces problems for trial courts that are unprecedented and unavoidable,' Bartheld said. Washington is among the few states that do not provide the majority of funding for public defense. In 1996, the state Legislature established the Office of Public Defense to provide supplemental representation for indigent defendants. Since 2005, the office has also been responsible for dispersing the limited state funding to counties — funding which does not surpass 3% of total spending for public defense services. Total state funding for counties in 2024 and 2025 was about $5.8 million each year. County revenues collected from property and sales tax make up remaining funds, but in Washington, local governments can only increase their property tax revenue by 1% without voter-approved ballot measures, failing to keep pace with the rising costs of running a court. 'The total revenue that you can generate… [is] beneath the rate of inflation,' Young said. 'It turns out your employees won't work for only 1% increases year over year.' In Ferry County, one of the least-populous counties in the state with about 7,500 residents, less than 18% of land is taxable. The rest is either reservation or national forest, making revenue from property tax particularly low. Public defense services are managed by county commissioners who contract with one attorney, located over an hour's drive away. 'Facilities are extremely limited,' said Bob Dean, Ferry County commissioner. 'Running [the public defense program] consists of basically, desperately seeking another lawyer if we lose this one.' Recruitment is another hurdle. Public defenders have a taxing job. A high workload and relatively lower pay makes the job less appealing to law school graduates, said Colin Charbonneau, director of Spokane's public defender's office. On top of that, many are not apt to relocate somewhere rural. In Benton County, 'we do not have a law school here locally, the closest one is in Spokane, which is about two and a half hours east of us,' said Keith Johnson, director of the Benton County public defender's office. 'We compete with other counties for talent.' InvestigateWest obtained 2023 grant applications sent to the Office of Public Defense from 10 rural and three urban counties. All counties, except one that didn't respond to the prompt, voiced the same concern: Retention and recruitment are struggles. 'The increasing salaries in larger areas has decreased the available attorney[s] in rural communities,' Okanogan County reported in its grant application. 'In addition, we continue to lack affordable housing.' Lewis County blamed the state's lack of funding for its issues. Its grant application said that 'unfunded mandates are absolutely the biggest challenge for counties across the state' and that 'other sources of funding will need consideration.' For years, Yakima's public defense office has tried to recruit more attorneys. County commissioners repeatedly approved new budgets to offer 20% pay increases, $12,000 in sign-on bonuses and retention bonuses for existing public defenders. Despite the attempts, few applied. For years, there were warnings. Back in July 2022, Kelley began sending monthly emails to the Yakima Superior Court judge and the director of prosecuting attorneys explaining the difficulty hiring attorneys and that new case filings 'outnumber[ed] the closing of felony cases.' In August 2022, Kelley decided to max out the county public defender office's capacity at 160 felony cases a month, with leftover cases carried over to the next month. Seven months later, the leftover cases had grown to 223 — more than 150% of the office's capacity — causing further delays for new case filings. It meant 'indigent felony cases first appearing in Superior Court on and after May 19, 2023, will not have in-house or contracted felony qualified counsel available … before July,' Kelley said in an email dated May 31, 2023. At the time, two dozen defendants in-custody would wait until July for counsel. Yakima County's backlogged court directly affected its defendants, many of whom could not afford a private attorney. 'The heavy caseloads harm marginalized clients — often young, non-white individuals involved in gangs with traumatic personal histories — who need experienced attorneys to navigate their complex situations,' Vanessa Martin, a longtime public defender in Western Washington, said in an email to the state Supreme Court concerning a proposal to adopt new caseload standards. The display on Mac Jardine's computer at the Grays Harbor County Department of Public Defense is a photo of Noah's Ark. When Jardine was hired to be the first director of the program, she was asked to 'build' the department. 'I had no direction, and they had no direction,' Jardine said. 'It's like sending me out to build an ark, and my name ain't Noah … I have built my office from scratch.' Because administration of indigent defense services is decentralized in Washington, counties are operating with mixed models. Less than half of Washington counties have an office dedicated to public defense. The state Office of Public Defense encourages counties to create offices, but costs for space, public defenders, a director and other administrative positions are beyond the means of many rural counties. King County employs all of its public defenders through the county. Grays Harbor County uses a mixed model of county and contracted public defenders. Asotin County in the state's southeast corner relies solely on contracted attorneys to deliver public defense services. In 2022, Kittitas County in Central Washington opened its own public defense department with its first employee, Eileen Murphy, now director of the program. On top of managing the county office, Murphy carries a full caseload. She works 'at least 60 hours a week,' in an office with 'a lot of walk-in traffic' and 'phones ring[ing] all day.' She hopes in the future to hire more positions. 'That's just the reality of the job for me,' Murphy said. 'There are still some policies and procedures I'd like to put into place, but dealing with my clients and their cases is… my first priority.' Murphy said this institutionalized model of public defense is better than relying on solely contracting attorneys because it holds people accountable. 'There are more protections in offices, because you have supervisors, and you have people that can review your work,' said Liz Mustin, supervising attorney of criminal defense programs at the Office of Public Defense. 'Prosecutors are county employees who get county benefits and retirement plans, and the [contracted] defenders are just kind of on their own.' Critics of contract attorneys say they aren't as invested in their indigent defendants because they have other cases that might be more financially rewarding through a private firm. But for rural counties, models like this become the only way these services are possible. 'I think relying on contract attorneys is a little scary because you just really have to rely on the attorneys' integrity and intelligence and experience,' said Lisa Pruitt, co-author of 'Legal Deserts and Spatial Injustice,' a study on indigent defense programs in rural Washington counties. 'There's a lot at stake for people if something goes wrong.' Desperate for attorneys, some rural counties offer almost twice what urban counties pay contract attorneys. Asotin, Grays Harbor and Whitman counties offer $150 an hour for contract attorneys. King County, by contrast, offers $85 an hour. Now, the state's system is at a crossroad. Recent efforts to resolve Washington's public defender shortage have stalled in the Legislature — except for Senate Bill 5780, passed in 2024, which created the law student rural defense program allowing law students to gain internship experience in rural jurisdictions. Though not a cure-all for rural counties, it helps, attorneys say. Yakima County Department of Assigned Counsel described the program as 'an overwhelming success' after two students who interned one summer returned the following year and expressed their intention to join the office after graduation, according to its grant application. This year, Senate Bill 5404, a bill that would have revolutionized Washington's public defense by making the state pay for virtually all public defense programs, fell flat. Many are now anxiously awaiting the state's Supreme Court to decide on new workload standards, which would dramatically reduce the caseloads for public defenders. Last year, the Washington State Bar Association adopted the standards and asked the Supreme Court to do the same. The Supreme Court has no deadline to act. If adopted, the new standards would set the maximum capacity for adult felony cases at 47 a year, less than a third of what it is today, but on a rolling basis over three years. Current standards, developed from a 1973 study, allow public defenders to take on up to 150 felony cases a year. But felony cases are more complex than they were 50 years ago and require the acumen of an experienced attorney. Public defenders say for a serious felony case, an attorney might sift through hours of body camera footage, order psychological evaluations, retain an investigator, create a defense strategy all while repeating the process for other clients and spending days in and out of court hearings. The stress adds up. People leave the field. Public defense administrators scramble to accommodate the constitutional right to counsel. The state's Office of Public Defense and King County have already adopted the standards, but counties are not required to abide by them until the Supreme Court affirms it. 'We know as a matter of fact that there is a crisis in public defense,' Matt Sanders, interim director of King County Department of Public Defense, said in the Supreme Court's hearing on indigent defense standards. 'The people who are harmed by this system are disproportionately people of color, the mentally unwell, LGBTQ members of our community. And we know if this court does not adopt these standards, that this ongoing crisis will continue unabated.' The Washington State Bar Association asked for contractors to conduct a workload study last year and chose the same vendor who conducted a similar study in Oregon. The bar association says the study will conclude in late summer this year. There are many opponents, namely from rural counties, who say the standards would exacerbate the public defender shortage by mandating counties to hire more attorneys over a relatively short timeline without state funding. 'The real problem is that the additional attorneys needed to bring the county in compliance with the amendments simply do not exist,' Albert Lin, prosecuting attorney for Okanogan County, said in a letter to the Supreme Court. 'This is why I find the proposed amendments so perplexing — the solution to a supply problem is to create more demand?' Over the last 20 years, three lawsuits in Washington have accused contracted public defenders of failing to provide adequate representation. Those lawsuits originated in rural counties that today feel like their concerns should prevent the Supreme Court from accepting proposed new standards that would significantly reduce public defenders caseloads and mandate new hires. 'To implement these standards as low as proposed will basically take away the very few attorneys that I have,' said Brooke Burns, Superior Court Judge for Asotin, Garfield and Columbia counties in Asotin County's grant application. 'Cases will have to be dismissed. This means that victims will not be made whole or felt to have secured justice. It will decrease community safety because defendants will have the knowledge that if there is no attorney, their crimes will go unpunished.' This article was first published by InvestigateWest ( an independent news nonprofit dedicated to investigative journalism in the Pacific Northwest. Reporter Aspen Ford, a Roy W. Howard fellow, can be reached at aspen@
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
GOP Rep's Farms Raided By ICE After She Says She Became 'Target' Of Far Right
An Idaho Republican is speaking out after a local party official boasted online about reporting her family's farming business to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Idaho state Rep. Stephanie Mickelsen told KTVB in an article published on Monday that she is 'one of the few that have stood up to the far right extremism' and because of that, she has become a target. Mickelsen is listed online as the CFO for her family's potato farming business. She maintained in an op-ed for the Idaho Statesmen that the business complies with all 'applicable federal and state laws' regarding employment and immigration. However, she said she became 'the target of intimidation tactics designed to silence ' her when Ryan Spoon, Ada County GOP vice chairman, announced Jan. 21 on X that he was reporting her businesses to ICE. 'Attention, Mr. Homan, could you please send some illegal immigration raids to the businesses owned by Idaho State Rep. Stephanie Mickelsen?' Spoon wrote on X, referring to President Donald Trump's 'border czar' Tom Homan. 'She has been bragging about how many illegals her businesses employ. Here is a list of the businesses to raid,' he continued, linking to an 'about' page on Mickelsen's political website. In a follow-up post, he wrote that he was 'filling out' ICE tip forms for 'all of Rep. Mickelsen's businesses.' ICE showed up at Mickelsen Farms three days later, Mickelsen told Investigate West. One immigrant worker employed there was detained by ICE as of Jan. 27, according to the news outlet. Mickelsen said that the man was detained because of a criminal record, and she did not know his immigration status. The lawmaker did not respond to a request for comment from HuffPost. Spoon told HuffPost that he really did report Mickelsen's family business to ICE. 'I reported her to ICE, because she bragged about hiring illegals,' he said in an email. He also told Investigate West that Mickelsen's 'own testimony drew attention to herself.' That testimony, he told HuffPost, was when Mickelsen spoke out against a bill that would let local law enforcement detain and possibly deport undocumented immigrants. (Mickelsen ultimately voted for the bill, which has yet to pass the state Senate.) Spoon pointed to video of Mickelsen's testimony posted by political group Stop Idaho RINOs. RINO is an acronym used to mean 'Republican in name only.' 'I think everybody needs to be aware that when we keep going down this road of attacking illegal immigrants, you're mainly attacking Hispanics in this case,' she said in the clip. She continued, 'If you guys think you haven't been touched by an illegal immigrant's hands in some way, through either your traveling or your food, you're kidding yourselves.' Spoon also told HuffPost that his actions 'had nothing to do' with political rivalry. 'She lives on the opposite side of the state from me. There is no position for which she would be my 'rival.'' Mickelsen said Spoon targeting her business represents a broader issue. 'These attacks aren't just about me,' Mickelsen wrote in her op-ed. 'They represent a dangerous shift in our political discourse. When elected officials can be bullied into silence because of false statements and threats to their livelihoods and safety, we all lose.' Millions Of Voters Risk Disenfranchisement Under Republican Proposal 'Huge Screwup': Republicans Give Group Chat Breach A Thumbs Down Emoji Former Utah Rep. Mia Love, The First Black Republican Woman Elected To The U.S. House, Has Died
