After years of activist complaints that King County is not doing enough to monitor immigration enforcement flights using its Seattle airport, the county has hired an employee who will ensure those flights follow safety regulations and count the number of handcuffed and shackled people coming on and off.
The newly hired flight monitoring and outreach coordinator started recently at King County International Airport, aka Boeing Field, after a month of training. Her job is not exclusively focused on flights chartered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement but all those with more than 18 passengers or involving buses taking passengers to and from planes, as well as various other duties, said county spokesperson Barbara Ramey.
Derek Baker, the county’s director of strategic initiatives, cast the hire in generic, nonconfrontational terms, saying it is meant to ensure compliance … across the airport” with a long list of regulations enacted in November…