KING COUNTY, WA (MyBellinghamNow.com) – A federal appeals court has ruled that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) can continue using Boeing Field for chartered deportation flights.

The agency has used airports around the country to charter flights deporting hundreds of thousands of noncitizens considered lawfully removable from the U.S.

But in 2019, King County Executive Dow Constantine issued an executive order expressing concern that the deportations could constitute human rights abuses. The order prompted ICE to begin using an airport in Yakima, which a much farther drive from ICE’s Northwest detention center in Tacoma.

The U.S. sued King County in 2020, arguing that Constantine’s order discriminated against the federal government.

U.S. District Judge Robert J. Bryan agreed, and Constantine issued a new executive order superseding his old one early last year.

Deportation flights resumed by May 2023, following Bryan’s decision and Constantine’s second executive order.

In a ruling Friday, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld Bryan’s ruling.