Connecting flight, customs/immigration and checked bags at SeaTac

Do we pick up our bags at SeaTac, go through immigration/customs and then recheck them for our flight to Portland?

You collect your bags before anything else, go through passport control, and then walk through customs with your bags, and there will be a counter or drop off zone where your bags are taken and put on the conveyor for your flight to Portland. After that, you will go through a TSA checkpoint before your next flight.

Very simple.

This has a good visual https://www.portseattle.org/page/international-connections and this has more info on the "bags first" process https://www.portseattle.org/services-amenities/international-arrivals-and-passport-control

After you get off the plane in Seattle you follow the crowd to a baggage area for the arrival of international flights via the tallest escalator I've ever seen. (It’s all very obvious when you get there.) Then right near the luggage carousels are the passport control lines. Get in the global entry line with your luggage. Then once you get through passport control you’ll see another luggage carousel where you drop your luggage back off. From there (and this is what threw me off because our international flights had been significantly delayed and making our domestic connection was going to be tough.) we had to form one line and go through a TSA screening. Everyone (even if you had tsa precheck) had to remove shoes, belts, take out laptops, etc) It was a very slow slog and we barely made our connecting flight. This was last year so maybe now they’ve improved that part with more than one line or maybe aren’t requiring the shoe removal etc. Who knows? After, we had to make a mad dash to our gate and barely made our connection. And I give the credit to this forum, because as we sat and sat and sat on the tarmac in Amsterdam then finally towed back to our gate, Delta sent a link to allow us to change connecting flight in Seattle but it would have required an overnight stay in Seattle. So the good folks on the forum explained exactly what was going to happen/what we could expect when arriving in Seattle (sans the mention of the singular TSA line requiring above mentioned experience) and it sure helped us make a decision in real time on whether to change our flight.

Thank you all. Although now I’m wondering if a 2hr15 connection time is too short. There are several flights between Seattle and Portland so I could catch another one if we miss our scheduled flight I suppose.

Thank you all. Although now I’m wondering if a 2hr15 connection time
is too short. There are several flights between Seattle and Portland
so I could catch another one if we miss our scheduled flight I
suppose.

Assuming the Paris flight arrives on time, since you have GE it is probably more than enough time. Pam from Idaho made a shorter connection than that recently using GE. Just don't dally along the way. FWIW, I had a shorter transfer time scheduled on Delta for the same route (Paris-SEA-PDX) and was going to go for it, but they canceled the SEA-PDX flight and put us on a later flight to Portland. So we'll be kicking around Sea-tac for 4 hours instead :/

I agree with CL. With GE and sitting in Delta Economy Comfort I had time to waste at the gate to my Spokane flight with about 1hr 20 minutes transit time. Two hours will be plenty with GE.

For the first time in ages I checked a bag and was shocked at how fast they came out.

For Global Entry, the lane is on the far left as you approach, closest to the big interior wall. When you pick up your bags, walk along the carousel to the inside and you’ll be right there.

I also recommend you make a comfort stop in this area..there are bathrooms just after you pass the Immigration area and another one along the hall before the bag drop. Neither of these are busy and you’ll have plenty of time.

GE literally took 15 seconds. Long enough to have the camera take my picture and the guy waved me through.

I would not go with longer transit times BUT keep that information in your back pocket in case you have delays on your flight to the US.

Thank you again! I feel better about the connection time given what has been shared here.