Mount Vernon residents urge council to denounce anti-immigrant remarks, deliver policy response

Dozens of residents told the Mount Vernon City Council on Feb. 26 that remarks by a Ward 1 council member amounted to dehumanizing rhetoric and demanded formal action from the city.

Speakers from the immigrant and farmworker communities described feeling threatened and unsafe after comments made at a January meeting, and presented a community-drafted resolution asking the council to affirm enforcement of the Keep Washington Working Act of 2019 and to adopt local noncooperation language with federal immigration enforcement.

The issue drew multiple public commenters over more than an hour of the Feb. 26 meeting. Caroline Bachetto, who said she works in Ward 1, told the council: "If you are neutral in situations of injustice you have chosen the side of the oppressor." She said immigrants make up 16% of Mount Vernon's population and urged the council to "do everything within its power to enforce the Keep Washington Working Act, protect Mount Vernon's immigrant families, and denounce hate speech." Lynn Campbell, a resident, said her neighborhood had experienced mail…