By Carolyn Bick
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
Immigrants around the country face increasing pressure and stress from federal immigration enforcement agents sweeping into communities, rounding up immigrants regardless of their status and without due process. Though agents haven’t yet come to Seattle and surrounding areas in notable numbers, the City of Seattle is nevertheless preparing for such a situation, Cuc Vu, the City’s director of the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs (OIRA) said.
“We’re terrified that those same activities may come to Seattle. Donald Trump himself has called out Seattle and welcoming cities. So we remain on high alert,” Vu told the Seattle Channel’s Brian Callanan, referencing previous immigration actions in places like Minneapolis that left two Americans dead. “But the truth is that … they’re very opaque. They do things chaotically. And I think it’s intentionally that way to keep us confused, keep our communities afraid. And as a city, we’re going to take this time to do our due diligence and put our resources together, work with our community partners. … We’re about ready to announce an investment of $4 million that was added, and that will probably be coming up in the next couple of weeks. But overall, it’s anybody’s guess where this goes next, or if they will do anything at all.”
Vu and fellow panelists Matt Adams, who serves as legal director for the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP), and Vanessa Torres Hernandez, the ACLU of Washington’s integrated advocacy director, spoke with Callanan on March 12 about the scope of federal actions that Seattle and different organizations are preparing to defend against.
Increased threat to all immigrants—even naturalized ones
Adams noted that the state is already seeing an increase in Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arresting and deporting people from Washington.
“We haven’t seen the same level of intensity as some of the other cities that Cuc mentioned,” Adams said. “For example … at the beginning of the Trump administration, [the Northwest Detention Center] held 800 people while they were in removal proceedings. Now, it’s at capacity at 1,500, almost 1,600 individuals. … They’re arresting so many individuals that they’re often transporting community members from Washington state to Texas, Louisiana, and other detention centers because they don’t have enough detention space. So that right there shows you the magnitude of the increase of … of detention that’s happening.”
But, as with most of the cases across the U.S., most of the people the NWIRP serves don’t have criminal records. Instead, they have lived here for years, have families, and even have kids who are citizens by birth.
“And all that is just disregarded and they’re not considered for release as they would have been in the past,” Adams said. “They’re held in detention and it’s intentionally in a way that is trying to force them to give up on their cases because they despair being locked up for weeks, months, not knowing when these cases are going to conclude. And many of them do in fact give up on their cases and just accept deportation because they can’t bear to suffer any more imprisonment.”
One of the most harrowing problems is, Adams said, “the Trump administration’s flat-out disregard of the law.”
“When they lose in court, they continue to act in the same manner. They don’t abide by the judgment of the court,” Adams said. “And that affects not just immigrants who are the subject of that court case, but it affects the overall democracy here. And you see that spreading out beyond immigration cases. … It’s a major point of alarm that we’re at this point in our society where there’s genuine debate now whether the executive needs to pay attention to the judiciary.”
But the issue goes beyond just enforcement, Vu said. It even affects naturalization proceedings.
“You’re seeing people who are having their naturalization canceled. … You’re seeing refugees denied entry, even though they’ve gone through years of vetting and waiting in line. And organizations that support that infrastructure are decimated in their budgets,” Vu said. “The impact of this has just been so significant [for] both our residents, but also the organizations that serve those residents.”
Hernandez said that what the Trump administration is ultimately doing is about “power. It is about the ability to act without any checks and balances, without any regard for limits. And that power applied to immigrant communities can be used against all of us.”
“We’ve seen that in Minneapolis. The targets of the violence in Minneapolis were first immigrant communities, but that broadly extended to anybody who disagreed, protested, witnessed the activity of the administration,” Hernandez continued. “I think we all have to be incredibly concerned with the impacts of this crackdown, not just because they may impact our neighbors, but ultimately because the power that the administration is attempting to claim is power it will use against all of us.”
The panelists also touched on birthright citizenship, which the Trump administration is also seeking to end, either wholly or in part.
“That’s really an attempt to create a permanent underclass of children who are born in this country to parents who have followed the rules and to say that they don’t belong and are not entitled to American citizenship,” Hernandez said. “They’re also threatening to strip naturalization from folks who have gone through the legal immigration process and say, ‘Actually, we just don’t believe that you belong in this country anymore,’ and have launched massive investigations in an attempt to identify folks to denaturalize.”
Seattle’s plans
In addition to the state legislature banning federal agents’ use of face coverings, the push to make the Department of Licensing stop sharing drivers’ data, and the NWIRP’s joint class action suit challenging removals to third countries—for instance, deporting someone from Vietnam to South Sudan, a real case the NWIRP is handling—the City of Seattle will be giving OIRA a $4 million budget boost, following community advocacy last year.
“We listened to a lot of folks and what we heard time and time again is that people are afraid. People said that they need more legal resources. So a considerable amount of resources will be going to legal representation,” Vu said. “In Seattle, we have 14,000 cases in Seattle Immigration Court, and roughly 60% of them are unrepresented. And so we want to put that money where the greatest need is.”
She said that the office is also looking at rapid response work, which includes Know Your Rights training. These kinds of training are in high demand, Vu discovered.
“I was on a ‘Know Your Rights’ virtual training. I tried to register in February—couldn’t get on,” Vu recalled. “And then I finally got into March and they capped it at 3,000 people. So that’s what you’re looking at. The demand for this information is just astronomical and understandably so because people are terrified. So we want to support more of that.”
But supporting a targeted, frightened community takes more than just virtual training. The office is looking into supporting the immigrants and refugees more holistically through schools, small businesses, and service providers.
“People are afraid to go to these different places, so we want to also put out a [request for proposals] for small community grants. … We need to get the dollars out there to help [community response]. And it could look like mutual aid. It could look like more training, but specific to languages or neighborhoods,” Vu said. She also said that the office is seeing whether it can put together money for emergency assistance or basic needs for people who are too afraid to leave their homes. If they can, Seattle will be the first city in the country to successfully do so.
“We could help pay for … rental assistance or groceries—any number of things that people are experiencing as barriers. So that’s kind of a quick snapshot,” Vu said. “I’m just excited that this money represents Seattle’s values, and we’re working very hard to try to get it out the door as quickly as possible.”
Vu also highlighted $2 million King County is investing in immigrant and refugee communities, and that Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson has coordinated immigration action response “from the street level up to the seventh floor of city hall. It’s not just police officers, we’re talking about how all city employees sometimes have access to this data.”
“I know the mayor is really concerned about that,” Vu said. “This is a high priority for her and we’ve been hard at work to try to get things ready.”