On Thursday, ICE needlessly detained Eduardo Aguirre Esparza, a local Seattle small business owner with no criminal history. This is a man who is married to an American citizen and with deep ties to our local community who was working hard to pursue a legal pathway to lawful permanent residence. For the federal government to waste its resources to forcefully detain and deport Eduardo and tear apart an American family is plain sick. Our immigration enforcement should be focused on violent criminals and keeping Americans safe—deporting hardworking people like Eduardo makes no one safer, it’s just cruel and wrong.

I am demanding that DHS return Eduardo to Washington state so that he may receive due process and have access to counsel—flying Eduardo to Texas away from his lawyers to try and deport him is fundamentally wrong and un-American. I hope others in Washington state will join me in calling for Eduardo’s immediate return home so that the courts can fairly consider his case.