Federal Way City Council ousts president after ICE protest post

The Federal Way City Council has replaced its president after he wrote a Facebook post expressing support for local students who were organizing walkouts to protest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Most of Councilmember Martin Moore’s colleagues said they thought he was wrong to write the post on his official city Facebook page, partly because it encouraged students to leave school and because it could have been interpreted as their collective view on a partisan political matter.

In response, Moore said he wrote the post only to show support for the student organizers and other Federal Way residents who are afraid of ICE’s operations, rather than to represent the council’s collective view.

Dozens of residents delivered public comments at a council meeting Tuesday night, mostly backing Moore. But after nearly three hours, the council voted 4-3 to rescind its January appointment of Moore as president and to replace him in that role with Councilmember Susan Honda.

Moore will remain on the council, just not in a presiding role.

Moore’s council critics insisted they were taking action against him based on his conduct as council president, including multiple social media posts they described as ill-advised, rather than because of his stance on ICE. They said the president should serve as a neutral consensus builder.

“We are not here because of what’s happened with a walkout,” Councilmember Linda Kochmar, who led the push to remove Moore, told the upset crowd Tuesday. “We’re talking about administration of this council.”

Yet the dispute showed how ICE’s heavy-handed operations are casting a shadow over local politics and stoked tensions on Federal Way’s technically nonpartisan council, which is split between more conservative and more progressive members. Kochmar has served in the state Legislature as a Republican. Moore chairs the 30th Legislative District Democrats.

“We are here tonight because some of my colleagues chose to politicize a decision I made simply because I lead differently than them,” Moore said.

Moore posted on Facebook following an after-school meeting with student groups at Federal Way High School before the Feb. 5 and Feb. 6 walkouts.

“I attended, listened and heard students share concerns, fears and questions (about ICE). What they shared was powerful and important,” he said Tuesday night, saying a student asked him to share their flyer on social media.

In a Feb. 3 Facebook post sharing the “ICE out of Federal Way” flyer, Moore wrote he was “deeply concerned” about ICE activity and expressed his support for students’ right to peacefully protest.

“Our young people are clearly feeling fear and uncertainty, and that is heartbreaking. I am proud of them for using their voices, and I stand with them,” he wrote on his Council President Martin Moore page.

“If you’d like to join them, please PM me,” Moore added at the end of his Facebook post, using an acronym for private message.

Moore said he quickly hid the post on his page after comments on it started to spiral and he got a phone call from Mayor Jim Ferrell. But a screenshot of the post continued to circulate online, stirring debate and eventually helping spur Kochmar to seek Moore’s ouster.

Some public commenters urged the council to remove Moore as president, including one who criticized him for taking a stand against ICE.

“The City Council is supposed to be nonpartisan,” she said, describing ICE’s operations as less important than other issues affecting Federal Way.

Many more commenters sided with Moore, including several who cited Federal Way’s diversity. Among the city’s 100,000 residents, 20% are Latino, and 32% are foreign-born, per census estimates. Moore is an immigrant and a naturalized U.S. citizen, he noted. He was adopted from Bulgaria.

“We should all be supporting our students as they protest the lawbreaking, brutal agency that makes a practice of ganging up and going to public schools” to arrest parents and students, one commenter said.

Kochmar and Honda voted to remove Moore’s council president title, as did Councilmembers Jack Walsh and Melissa Hamilton.

“A person in a responsible position of leadership should not be encouraging minors to violate state law by being truant from school,” Walsh said, adding, “The council president should be seeking to unite the council in addressing the needs of the city, not inflaming partisanship.”

Councilmembers Les Sessoms and Lydia Assefa-Dawson backed Moore.

“He did what leaders are expected to do. He amplified the voices of constituents who are expressing fear, frustration and a call for humanity,” Sessoms said. “That’s not misconduct. That is representation.”