On the evening of April 2, more than 200 asylum-seekers found themselves sleeping in tents on the cold, wet pavement of the Garfield Community Center tennis court. Earlier that morning, they had been kicked out of a Quality Inn hotel in Kent after their stay expired. The eviction forced them to leave many personal belongings behind.
A majority of the group went to an April 2 King County Council Health and Human Services Committee meeting to ask for more funding, to no avail. With few remaining options, the asylum-seekers decided to look for a place to camp. They spent two days camping at the tennis court before their stay at the Kent hotel got extended. It got extended a second time as a result of an anonymous donation received on April 12 through the Low Income Housing Institute; nevertheless, if asylum-seekers don’t get further support by April 29, they may have to sleep on the streets again.
Over the last two years, the U.S. has seen an influx of migrants entering the country to apply for political asylum. Many of them are fleeing conflicts started or abetted by U.S. foreign policy decisions, such as economic sanctions and military interventions.
The U.S. immigration system has not been able to keep up, leading to an ever-growing backlog of cases. According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, in December 2023, more than 3 million people were waiting for their cases to be processed. The federal government has failed to provide adequate housing and shelter for asylum-seekers, leaving state and local governments to figure out their own solutions.
With a reputation of taking in anyone in need, Tukwila’s Riverton Park United Methodist Church has become a hub for community support to asylum-seekers in the Seattle region. Once supporting a few dozen unhoused community members, the church’s grounds now host hundreds of people mainly from Venezuela, Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But Rev. Jan Bolerjack, the church’s leader, says it can no longer take in new residents.
In addition to staying at the church, many asylum-seekers have also found shelter in temporary government- and philanthropy-funded hotel rooms. These stays have been short, often renewed for only a couple of weeks at a time. Migrants formed their own organizations, such as Comunidad Sin Fronteras (CSF) and Mãos Unidas Pela Solidariedade, to advocate for long-term housing and legal support. By rallying at Seattle City Council and King County Council meetings, asylum-seekers and their allies successfully won extensions to their hotel stays. However, on April 2, their luck ran out.
In the meantime and with the help of mutual aid groups, the asylum-seekers were able to relocate to the Garfield tennis court. Both the asylum-seekers and Seattle Parks and Recreation workers agreed the situation was not tenable. Leidys Pérez, a leader with CSF, said they decided to move there because it was a relatively safe location close to bathrooms and other amenities.
“Seeing that we did not get a response and we were already out, that we didn’t have a hotel, we had to come this way to grab the whole family and look for a place that was a little safer,” Pérez said.
Pérez, who came to the U.S. from Venezuela two months ago, said she never wanted to be a leader. Community organizing came out of necessity, and sleeping on the asphalt ground of tennis courts was a poor substitute for real housing.
Despite the support of grassroots organizations like the International Migrants Alliance (IMA), asylum-seekers have been in limbo for months, relying on short-term half measures.
Many families at the Garfield encampment had young children, some of whom were enrolled in the Kent School District. The migrants were also joined by 14 other Central African asylum-seekers who had been evicted from a vacation rental home in Renton the prior weekend.
To draw attention to the migrants’ dire circumstances, CSF and IMA held a press conference outside the tennis court on April 3. Adriana Figueira, another leader with CSF, said they cannot successfully make it through the political asylum process without adequate housing.
“We are very hard-working people, and we keep finding ways to push forward and make a living,” Figueira said through an interpreter. “But really, without having the stable housing that we’ve been asking for — of just even two or three months of some stability — it’s so hard for us to follow through with our asylum cases, with our court cases, with seeking permission to work and with completing those documents.”
That same afternoon, the asylum-seekers received a private, anonymous donation of $50,000 that allowed them to return to the hotel for 11 days. Activists credited grassroots organizing and media attention for mobilizing local politicians to make statements and take action. King County Councilmember Sarah Perry helped connect the donor with the asylum-seekers.
While philanthropy has helped the asylum-seekers stay off the streets for now, Pérez said it is not a sustainable, long-term solution.
In March, the Washington Legislature allocated $32.75 million to support migrants and asylum-seekers. Of those funds, $25 million will go directly to the state’s Office of Refugee and Immigrant Assistance, while $5 million will go to King County and $2.5 million to the city of Tukwila.
However, the funding will not become available until July 1, the start of the new fiscal year. This means the asylum-seekers may be left looking for short-term solutions for the next three months. For Rosario Lopez, a mutual aid organizer with Super Familia, the lack of substantive policy solutions to deal with the crisis is deeply frustrating.
“We have been making calls; we have been sending emails,” Lopez said. “We have been requesting meetings with our city officials, and no one is listening. No one is helping.”
The asylum-seekers have come this far because of the power of their community organizing, which has now won a reprieve through the end of the month. Currently, there are no plans in place after the extended hotel stay expires on April 29. Unless a solution is reached, Lopez said that asylum-seekers could find themselves sleeping in tents once again.
Guy Oron is the staff reporter for Real Change. He handles coverage of our weekly news stories. Find them on Twitter, @GuyOron.
Read more of the April 17–23, 2024 issue.