SEATTLE — Sharp divisions emerged Wednesday as Seattle residents, housing advocates and environmental activists sparred over a proposal that would dramatically reshape the city’s land-use appeals process.

At issue is legislation proposed by Seattle City Councilmember Eddie Lin. The bill would eliminate State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) appeals to the city’s Hearing Examiner for major legislative actions, including Comprehensive Plan amendments and development regulations.

It prompted impassioned testimony at a public hearing before the Seattle City Council’s Land Use Committee, which Lin chairs.

Lin said his bill would prevent costly delays that have slowed housing production and climate-focused planning. Opponents countered that it would strip residents of one of their few affordable avenues for holding city government accountable on environmental issues before projects move forward.

Lin said that concentrating new housing in dense, walkable neighborhoods near transit reduces suburban sprawl, preserves forests and farmland, lowers greenhouse gas emissions and limits pollution harmful to salmon and orcas.

Lin said Seattle can achieve both affordable housing and a healthy urban tree canopy through thoughtful planning. However, having projects repeatedly delayed by appeals that ultimately have little legal standing is something the city cannot afford, Lin said.

Over the past several years, Washington lawmakers have expanded exemptions within SEPA specifically to reduce red tape for housing production. But Seattle’s municipal code still allows administrative appeals on many actions that state law has already exempted.

Although those appeals are frequently dismissed because of state law, city officials said the process itself can significantly delay legislation.

Under Lin’s proposal, residents could no longer file administrative SEPA appeals before the Hearing Examiner for major legislative actions. Instead, challenges would have to be brought before the Washington Growth Management Hearings Board or King County Superior Court.

During the public hearing, opponents said such a change would effectively place environmental appeals beyond the reach of many residents because pursuing litigation requires attorneys and substantially higher costs.

Several speakers warned that raising the financial barrier to appeals would disproportionately silence neighborhoods and community groups with limited resources.

Environmental advocates also argued the legislation removes an important layer of independent oversight before major decisions become law. They said appeals have historically uncovered flaws in Environmental Impact Statements, revealed previously undisclosed information and prompted improvements before projects advance.

The debate is expected to intensify as Seattle prepares for the next phase of updating its Comprehensive Plan under Mayor Katie Wilson’s administration. The forthcoming environmental review of the plan, which includes proposals for taller and denser development across the city, is likely to make the question of who can challenge environmental reviews a central issue in the coming year.

No vote was taken following Wednesday’s public hearing. The legislation will return to the City Council for further consideration.

Emily Galicia’s mother stood out among the thousands of friends and family members gathered on a grass lawn at UC San Diego’s 2026 graduation ceremony.

Her red felt hat was easy to spot as she weaved through the crowd, scanning the smiling graduates filing off the stage for her daughter, a bouquet of white roses and a teddy bear clutched in her arm. 

But earlier in her senior year, Galicia had worried her mom wouldn’t be there to celebrate her graduation at all.

In October, her mom hadn’t returned home after a scheduled appointment with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Instead, she had been detained and held in ICE custody, leaving Galicia, 22, and her older sister, 26, on their own for about a month. 

“I never thought it would happen,” Galicia said. 

President Donald Trump’s administration is on a mission to carry out the largest deportation in U.S. history. It has sparked political debates and pointed discussions about public safety and American identity, but the impact on the children of undocumented parents is much less abstract.

Immigration advocates say the administration has targeted immigrant families who have been in the U.S. for decades, some of whom have been checking in regularly with federal officials — despite claims from officials that they are focusing on deporting the “worst of the worst.” 

This week, the Supreme Court delivered one of the most significant blows to the administration’s immigration agenda so far — a decision with profound consequences for immigrant families. The justices ruled 6-3 against allowing the administration to eliminate birthright citizenship for babies born on American soil to some parents without citizenship. 

But other policy changes remain in place that could affect thousands of immigrant parents and their kids locally. According to an estimate from the nonprofit American Immigration Council, about 56,500 children under 18 lived with an undocumented parent in San Diego County in 2023.

While Galicia’s mom was eventually released from detention, the arrest altered her youngest daughter’s last year in college: Galicia moved her classes online to be able to take her mom to immigration and medical appointments, she spent less time with friends in her senior year of college, and she lived the constant anxiety that immigration agents were watching her family. 

“If it was a choice between graduating and helping my mom, I would choose to help my mom,” Galicia said. 

For families and communities across the U.S., graduation season is a time for celebration and optimism for the future. For immigrant families in particular, a child’s graduation can mean the realization of dreams generations in the making, through sacrifices and hard work. 

That was true for Galicia and her family earlier this month on the UCSD campus. 

Her graduation cap was decorated in pink, with lace and cloth roses adorning the top, along with the words, “Lo logré, Mama,” written in pearl beads. 

“I made it, Mom.”

The biggest lesson

Galicia knew the sacrifices her mom, who used to come home from long days of work with swollen feet and tired eyes, made for her and sister.

After the sisters’ dad died from a heart attack, Galicia’s mom considered moving her daughters back to her home country of Mexico, where the rest of her family remained. 

She decided instead that they should grow up and go to school in their own home country, the U.S.

“I always tell them: The three of us are in this together, and together we always pull through,” Galicia’s mom said in Spanish. 

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inewsource is not naming Galicia’s mother because she has a pending immigration case and her family fears retaliation from the government. She has been detained by ICE twice, the first time during the first Trump administration.

The oldest daughter Serenity, then 17, had to figure out how to pay rent, post bail for her mom and take care of her younger sister. When ICE detained her mom again almost 10 years later, Serenity said she felt no more prepared as she was when she was a teenager.

“I think most of those days it was just me sitting on my desk and crying at the same time while doing what I needed to do for work,” she said. 

According to ICE, the agency made about 10,500 arrests in San Diego and Imperial counties in the first 14 months of Trump’s second term. About 1,500 of those arrests happened near schools, hospitals, houses of worship and other places after the administration loosened guidelines around enforcement in such “sensitive locations.”  

Most of those arrested, like Galicia’s mother, have no criminal record, according to an inewsource analysis of ICE arrests in the region from Trump’s inauguration through October 2025.

Galicia graduated June 13 with a degree in economics and a minor in ethnic studies. She said she wants to use her degree to help working-class immigrant families like hers and support her mom. 

Outside of the graduation ceremony, the three posed for photos in front of a green hedge, laughing and crying as they embraced the graduating Galicia in the middle. 

Despite the recent challenges, Galicia holds onto the biggest lesson her mom bestowed: Have hope for the future.

“People can take everything away from you, and you can essentially go down to rock bottom, but there’s always a way to keep going forward,” Galicia said.

Five Norton Sound tribes are asking a federal judge to throw out a key federal permit for a large-scale gold mine proposed in Bonanza Channel, an estuary about 30 miles east of Nome.

The mine, proposed by a Nevada company called IPOP LLC, would dredge roughly 2.7 miles along the channel’s 28-mile estuary bed.

Oral arguments for the case went before a federal judge on June 16 in Anchorage. The tribal governments of the Village of Solomon, Native Village of Council, King Island Native Community, Chinik Eskimo Community and Native Village of White Mountain say that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ignored serious environmental and subsistence concerns when it granted the Clean Water Act permit for the proposed mine in 2024.

Erin Colón is an attorney with the environmental law nonprofit Earthjustice. She’s representing the tribes in the case.

“This is the first large‑scale dredging project, mining project in an estuary in Alaska, and it’s a project that every agency that reviewed it had major concerns about what the environmental impacts would be,” Colón said. “That’s Fish and Wildlife Service, NMFS, EPA, and the Alaska District of the (U.S. Army) Corps.”

The tribes filed the lawsuit a little over a year ago. It argues that the Corps violated the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Water Act by downplaying impacts to fish and wildlife habitat, migratory birds and marine mammals. And, they say the Corps did not fully consider how around‑the‑clock dredging could disrupt fishing, egg‑gathering and berry‑picking in and around Safety Sound, a critical area for subsistence users.

“It’s not just an estuary where, you know, there aren’t people living nearby, it’s a place with a rich history that is in active use still today,” Colón said.

Colón said tribal members of the Village of Solomon, whose historical homeland overlaps the proposed mining area, filled the courtroom to watch the hearing.

Deilah Johnson is a tribal member, council member and the tribal resources director for the Village of Solomon. She said the Bonanza Channel estuary functions as a year‑round subsistence location for nearby communities and as a place where people teach and pass down cultural practices. She flew into Anchorage from Oregon for the oral arguments, and said she joined more than two dozen other tribal members of all ages in the courtroom.

“Having our youth present with us, teaching them to continue the fight and to continue the important advocacy as our future leaders, I think was also just an incredibly proud moment for us as a community,” Johnson said. “Because that is where they go fishing, that is where they go swimming, that is where we have our own small education classes with our biologists, I mean, that is part of who they are.”

The Village of Solomon has been opposing the large-scale dredge mine since IPOP initially submitted its applications for the project in 2018.

Johnson said this lawsuit is the most recent opposition.

“It constantly feels like we can’t ever let our guard down, no matter what decision was made by who. We have to stay on guard and prepared for anything,” she said.

IPOP was initially denied the Clean Water Act permit by the Corps’ Alaska District office in 2022. The state branch found the project failed to prove it was the least environmentally damaging option, and was not in the public interest. In its statement rejecting the proposal, the Corps noted that less than 1% of permitting applications nationwide are denied, usually because the applicant refused to alter the design, timing or location of the project.

But IPOP filed its own lawsuit against the Corps, arguing the Alaska office acted in bad faith and dragged out the review. The company then filed a modified version of the project with a smaller footprint.

The Corps’ Pacific Ocean Division stepped in, and in 2024 vacated the Alaska District’s denial and issued a permit to the modified proposal.

IPOP’s proposed project

As it stands, the proposed mine would vacuum up the estuary bed, moving 4.5 million cubic yards of material to a nearly 160-acre area of land. IPOP’s permit application says this would turn the area from vegetated shallows to mudflats, but those impacts would be temporary.

Attorneys for the Corps argue that IPOP’s revised project reduces the environmental impacts, and an Environmental Impact Statement typical for large-scale projects permitted by the federal agency is not necessary.

In its written argument, the defense said the area is “expansive” and “mostly uninhabited,” and the impact would be confined to the footprint of the project. Further, they say no “unique subsistence resource” is available within the footprint of the project that couldn’t be found elsewhere and people could subsist in other areas.

The argument states that the Corps determined the Bonanza Channel was not a “particularly productive” area for fishing because of low water levels and higher water temperatures.

But Johnson said that the Corp’s argument effectively sidesteps local expertise and community concerns, and the smaller footprint does not offset the impacts.

“It to me doesn’t make any sense, but they are still claiming that there’s no fish. We proved that there was, and that the Corps didn’t consider the fish that are still with that yardage, regardless of how much smaller they made it,” Johnson said.

IPOP also needs state authorization to mine. A land use permit from the Alaska Division of Mining, Land and Water — within the state Department of Natural Resources — has been denied, and the state recently rejected IPOP’s appeal. Without both the federal and state permits, the company cannot move forward with the project.

Earthjustice attorney Colón said the denial could still be challenged in Superior Court.

“There is no guarantee that the state will stand by its denial, and there’s always a potential that a court could reverse that decision too,” Colón said.

There’s currently no timeline for a ruling, but Colón said she generally expects a written decision within about a year, though it could come sooner.

The U.S Army Corps’ Pacific Ocean Division did not respond to a request for comment for this story. IPOP also could not be immediately reached for comment.

This story originally appeared on KNOM and is republished here with permission.