Facing 2025 – MLK Inspiration, AIDNW Commitment, Tacoma Community House Immigration Presentation

Today we honor Martin Luther King, Jr.’s work, and we encourage everyone to contribute acts of service in the community, especially now and for the next 4 years as immigrant rights are in peril. Dr. King gave us the vision for a Beloved Community emphasizing the importance of unity, love, and reconciliation across racial and ethnic divides. He said, “Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.” We hope all who read this are able to take time for their communities and serve others today, and next month, and for the next 4 years, whether with AIDNW, or another great organization in your area.

An Inspiring AIDNW Community Meeting

Tacoma Community House Executive Director Aimee Khuu, pictured here alongside AIDNW Operations Manager Aidan Perkinson, was the featured guest speaker at the AIDNW Community Meeting this past Wednesday, January 15th. Aimee’s presentation was chock-full of details we all need to know about immigration services in Washington State.

During last week’s meeting, Aimee Khuu outlined what Tacoma Community House provides as services to immigrants in the area. Up to 200 people visit every day for ESL classes, for assistance getting basic needs like driver’s licenses, and to get front desk referrals to organizations that help with resettlement housing and legal aid.

Next, Aimee spoke of the two “feet” of equity – advocacy and direct service – that must be done in tandem to move social justice forward. Advocacy is particularly effective in our state, and falls somewhere within what one AIDNW audience member pointed out organizations like the ACLU are suggesting for the next 4 years, which is “litigation, dissent/protest, and supporting Blue State firewalls.”

Aimee pointed out that advocacy in Washington State rests on fundamental laws that allow immigrants without protected status to receive driver’s licenses, discourages state and local police from assisting civil federal immigration law enforcement, and more. In particular, the 2019 Keep Washington Working Act (KWW) established state laws supporting the role of immigrants in the workplace, and is considered the strongest state sanctuary policy in the nation. Washington’s law “prohibits state agencies from sharing personal information with the Department of Homeland Security, including ICE or CBP unless required by federal law or other limited circumstances.”

Aimee also detailed how advocacy in our state is also effective because the Washington State DSHS Office of Refugee & Immigrant Assistance (ORIA) was given the authority and funding to help refugees and immigrants “succeed and thrive.” Further, the Washington State Department of Commerce has provided $15.4 million to social services agencies for legal aid to immigrants, including $340,000 to Tacoma Community House.

According to ORIA, some of the people who are likely to be affected over the next 4 years include:

• Undocumented immigrants or people without immigration paperwork;
• People with temporary statuses, including Temporary Protected Status and parole;
• People seeking asylum;
• Mixed status families and many others;

In particular, immigrants may be affected via:

• Fewer H-2B visas forecasted to be approved; (Temporary Non-Ag Work Visa for foreign workers with work offer in the U.S.)
• TPS renewals stalling; (Temporary Protected Status)
• Refugees projected to be sent back;

Immigrants relatively safe from deportation are likely to include:

• Asylees with 5-year work permits;
• Permanent Residents ready for long-term employment;

Further, the Associated Press published a summary of the January 16, 2025 U.S. Senate hearing interviewing the potential incoming Homeland Security director. According to this summary, she said the new federal administration is intent on the following changes from Biden Administration policies:

• Ending CBP One, a phone app the Democratic Biden administration has used to process asylum-seekers’ entry into the country;
• Scaling back the use of humanitarian parole;
• Curtailing the use of temporary immigration relief for migrants from countries experiencing unrest;
• Reinstating the Trump-era policy of requiring asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration court;
• Prioritizing deportation of migrants with criminal records, then turning to those who have received final deportation orders, in an effort to increase deportations;

That said, the rhetoric may not live up to historical precedent, because according to an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute:

• 8 years of the Clinton Administration saw more than 12 million people deported.
• 8 years of the Bush II Administration saw more than 10 million people deported.
• 8 years of the Obama Administration saw more than 5 million deported. Cecilia Muñoz, a domestic policy adviser to Obama said in a 2019 phone interview with CNN  that Obama prioritized deporting people convicted of serious crimes and recent arrivals who had no criminal records. Muñoz opined, “It is more humane to be removing people who have been here two weeks than it is to be removing people who have been here for 20 years and have families.”
• 4 years of the Trump Administration saw about 2 million people deported, including 1.2 million through removal orders, and 805,770 self-deported or turned away at the border.
• 4 years of the Biden Administration saw approximately 4.7 million people deported, according to The Independent, although that “comes with a major caveat” as the “majority of this spike is attributed to the Title 42 order during the Covid-19 pandemic, which was enacted from March 2020 (during the Trump presidency) until 2023” and that it “was particularly enforced to prevent entry at the U.S.-Mexico border, removing the ability to request asylum. Biden tried to end Title 42 in 2022, but Republicans sued his administration citing border security concerns.”

Source: https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/immigration-enforcement/immigration-enforcement-and-legal-processes-monthly

During the Community Meeting presentation on Wednesday, Aimee Khuu pointed out that due to Biden Administration and Washington State funding policies over the past couple of years, staffing numbers at regional agencies like Tacoma Community House is currently at a historic high. She said that it will likely change dramatically since most federal immigration service funding is granted on a per-refugee-served basis, meaning that similar to what happened in the last Trump Administration, approximately 75% of that funding may dry up as refugee numbers decline – deported if already in the country, while new immigrants are turned away at the border.

Here at AIDNW, most of our funding comes from individual donors, so we aren’t likely to be as affected by federal grant cuts that Tacoma Community House, World Relief, and other larger organizations may be facing. Our volunteers are 100% committed to being present, just as we have been for over 15 years, for immigrants in detention at the Northwest ICE Processing Center, and for all immigrants who walk out the gates after paying tens of thousands of dollars in bonds to be free in the United States of America.

A quote Aimee shared from Og Mandino during the Community Meeting this week was: “I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.” For our part, we will continue to find the light, and the stars in 2025, in our work here as Advocates for Immigrants in Detention Northwest (AIDNW).

AIDNW Volunteer Kim Chisholm standing in front of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, DC, next to memorial wall with inscription from King’s 1964 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech: “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”