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In February, as part of our ongoing coverage of immigration enforcement in Washington, we shared both on-the-ground accounts and an University of Washington report detailing how ICE is making arrests.

Multimedia Journalist Jaelynn Grisso has an update on how and why immigration enforcement has increased.

- This arrest, made by ICE in Yakima, happened when the man approached his car leaving Walmart on Christmas Eve.

New data from the University of Washington Center for Human Rights revealed that this is far from an isolated incident.

- We have now obtained data to show that levels of enforcement, or arrests, surge towards the end of 2025, beginning of 2026 to historic levels.

According to that data, ICE made about 100 arrests in Washington in January 2025.

The number of arrests steadily increased, reaching more than 350 arrests in December.

Some areas of Washington saw many more arrests, especially Yakima County, which had about 180 arrests in 2025.

That's three times more than the second highest, Franklin County.

Researchers at the center attribute the surge to a relatively new immigration enforcement tactic, where agents look up plates using state license data, then cross-reference that with DHS.

Godoy says that allowing this use of state data violates Washington law.

A representative from the Department of Licensing said the agency was asked to submit a report on its compliance with state immigration policies and expects to publish it in early June.

Thank you for watching The Newsfeed.

We'll continue follow-up week next time with the Millionaires' Tax and how it's begun to roll out.