Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell Is Misinformed, Sparse On Action

One day after HardPressed revealed that the Seattle Police Department (SPD) was prioritizing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) requests for records over citizens’ requests, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell issued two new executive orders (EO) concerning actions to “safeguard Seattle communities from federal overreach” and held a press conference touting his work. 

First off, Mayor Harrell was seriously misinformed in his remarks.

According to a press release announcing the EOs, Harrell stated that “We are in a truly unprecedented time in modern history where the president is talking about using American cities as ‘training grounds’ for the military.”

In reality, this is very much precedented. 

HardPressed can reveal that Seattle itself signed an agreement with the U.S. Army Special Operations Command (SOCOM) to be an explicit training ground for the U.S. military in 2018. The signed agreement states that SOCOM will use Seattle during four Advanced Special Operations Techniques Courses in 2019 and 2020. 

A FOIA request made by HardPressed concerning further details of this SOCOM training remains unfulfilled, now years after it was submitted.

Coupled with this explicit agreement is the fact that active duty Army Special Operations Forces used Portland, Oregon to study possible psychological warfare against U.S. citizens in 2020. 

Additionally, active duty U.S. military forces (separate from the National Guard) are explicitly authorized to support FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF) that SPD officers participate in, to target anyone suspected of anti-fascist ideologies.  

In 2016, Nick Turse reported that the Pentagon was explicitly preparing soldiers for a new locus of warfare within the urban environment. The use of American cities as a training ground for the Pentagon is fully precedented, even explicitly so in Seattle. 

However, that's not the only thing Harrell got wrong at his press conference yesterday. In responding to questions about ICE calling 911, Harrell told the Press that “to my knowledge, in duty, an ICE agent has never made a 911 call to a local jurisdiction.” 

However, that’s not true either. Federal Protective Services called SPD in June to assist in supporting federal agents. Media reports from Illinois and New York have shown that ICE officers have made false 911 calls, causing significant disruption to local law enforcement and emergency responders. 

While false reporting is a felony in Washington State, Harrell’s EOs does not explicitly state if the SPD will arrest federal agents for false 911 calls, which could wreak havoc upon Seattle’s emergency response capabilities, affecting the safety of all Seattleites across the city. 

Additionally, Harrell acknowledged that “We’ve all seen photos and videos of masked ICE agents literally kidnapping people from neighborhoods, from our streets and sidewalks with impunity,” implicitly acknowledging that kidnapping, which is a federal crime, is being perpetrated by federal agents under the color of law, without accountability. 

Yet, Harrell’s orders do not address that the SPD could arrest and charge federal agents under federal criminal statute 18 U.S.C. § 242 for kidnapping. 

Executive Orders

Mayor Harrell’s two separate executive orders, EO 2025-07 & EO 2025-08 were both signed at his press conference on October 8. 

The meat of EO 2025-07 establishes a “Seattle Resilience Task Force” to “coordinate Citywide interdepartmental planning and response.” However, that’s something the city’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) should already be doing in a competent administration, and something the OEM is explicitly designed to accomplish. 

Curiously, the Director of the OEM, who is tasked with operating the city's most essential emergency response infrastructure, has communicated in the past over private messages with an Israeli man who operates a training group that has liked a significant amount of anti-immigrant content online.

Mayor Harrel’s EO 2025-07 also establishes that the "Mayor’s Office shall work with the City Attorney’s Office." That's not really groundbreaking stuff requiring an executive order.

Within an emergency management context, everything that EO 2025-07 establishes is fairly standard coordination that should be occurring already between the city and other agencies, and has historically occurred during the deployment of the National Guard to Seattle in 2020. 

While, EO 2025-07 requires the SPD to “issue a directive to officers providing guidance consistent with this Executive Order,” it’s unclear exactly what those directives will say. The Mayor’s office did not immediately respond when asked to provide more details.

Mayor Harrell’s second executive order, EO 2025-08, orders a “resource fair bringing together community members, partner organizations, and City departments to foster local coordination and resource sharing for immigrant community members.” 

Again, these are things that could be done without an executive order, and largely, the order simply restates facts about the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs (OIRA).

Harrell’s EO 2025-08 also states that the Mayor’s office will develop an ordinance to ban face masks by law enforcement. That kind of action doesn’t necessitate an executive order either, as Harrell’s office has previously submitted legislation to city council for adoption in numerous instances. Harrell’s proposed ordinance says it will require “visible emblems and badges” for all law enforcement officers operating within the city.

However, the primary problem our nation is facing is not that ICE officers have not Velcroed the proper ICE insignia onto their plate carriers. It’s, as Mayor Harrell alluded to in his comments, that ICE agents are using chemical weapons, racially profiling people, taking them off the street, and disappearing them, or worse, killing them in custody or in the street.  

Harrell’s orders don’t address how the city of Seattle will protect Seattleites against ICE’s conduct, nor address how SPD would enforce a law enforcement mask ban or requirements to wear proper identifying insignia.  

Further, Harrell’s EO 2025-08 states that “To create transparency on federal civil immigration-related actions that impact the City of Seattle, the City through the Mayor’s Office will regularly submit Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to obtain information related to federal immigration enforcement activity within the city.”

Anyone who has submitted a FOIA request knows that responses are routinely redacted, rejected and delayed, in some cases, for years on end. 

“We have to be smarter, and strategic,” Harrell said at his press conference, when it comes to the Trump Administration’s threats. 

However, Harrell appears misinformed and conspicuously sparse on concrete details about how Seattle government will support its own citizens in a time of siege and hold law enforcement officers accountable for violating municipal, state and federal law. 

Note: Mayor Harrell's office did not immediately respond to comment for this report.