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Seattle — and Washington as a whole — isn’t letting up on President Donald Trump when it comes to immigration.
Washington on Jan. 30 became the first state to sue to block Trump’s executive order on immigration — called by many a “Muslim ban” for its aim at majority Muslim nations, a lawsuit that so far has blocked enforcement of the ban, even if only until the full case is heard.
Before that, city and county leaders risked losing federal funding by doubling down on their position as a sanctuary city, pledging not to assist federal authorities in immigration enforcement.
And this official activity has taken place against a backdrop of protest and public outrage over Trump’s policy positions.
But all that shouldn’t come as a surprise.
The Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metropolitan is among the 20 metro regions that are home to the more than half of all undocumented immigrants in the U.S., according to a recent analysis by the Pew Research Center.
Click through the slideshow above to see how Seattle compares to other metro regions.
About 150,000 immigrants without legal status live in the Seattle metro area, according to Pew’s analysis of 2014 estimates, the most recent available.
That puts Seattle at 16th most populous for undocumented immigrants, with about 10,000 fewer than Philadelphia and 20,000 more than the Denver metro.
Are people in the U.S. being illegally rounded up in immigration raids. According to the Associated Press several advocacy groups are claiming that people are being taken into custody on suspicion of living in the U.S. illegally. The groups say the efforts have picked up significantly under the Trump administration. The advocates are calling them "heavy-handed raids" noting they have been taking place in Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Texas and North Carolina and elsewhere.
In all, the 20 metro regions in Pew’s analysis account for 6.8 million — 61 percent — of the estimated 11.1 million undocumented (Pew refers to them as “unauthorized”) immigrants in the country.
The New York-Newark-Jersey City and Los Angeles metro regions are far and away the leaders with 1.15 million and 1 million undocumented immigrants, respectively.
The Seattle metro’s undocumented population accounts for about 23 percent of all foreign-born residents in the region, and about 3.9 percent of all residents.
Statewide, Washington had about 250,000 undocumented immigrants living within its borders in 2014, according to an older Pew analysis.
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