On a cold Friday morning in November, Latinos en Spokane's office on north Monroe Street is buzzing with staff providing a myriad of services for those in need. Phones are ringing, forms are being filled out by women seeking help understanding what the papers say, and staff are translating documents for legal services and a bilingual driver's license education program.
Latinos en Spokane is a grassroots nonprofit that began in 2016 with a primary focus on immigration advocacy. Their work aims to help immigrant communities that have a harder time using government resources because of residency status.
Similar work is happening in nonprofits around the region that offer help to immigrant communities as they brace for another Trump administration and community backlash driven by anti-immigrant rhetoric from the incoming president and his allies.
Executive Director Jennyfer Mesa is leading the charge at Latinos en Spokane. She explains that her team has prepared to respond to Project 2025, the 900-plus-page plan that conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation created for another Trump administration. Its authors include many Trump allies, and some are expected to hold positions in the second Trump administration.
While Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025, his platform touted identical components related to immigration policy. Trump's plans include curtailing immigration programs that provide support for asylum seekers and humanitarian parolees. Additionally, his plans call for the mass deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants.
Latinos en Spokane is already ramping up efforts to help immigrants pursue legal residency. In addition to its monthly legal immigration clinics with volunteer lawyers, Latinos en Spokane opened its own legal department in June.
The nonprofit now employs an immigration attorney, a caseworker and a paralegal, who are handling 260 cases. The nonprofit plans to hire even more people to accommodate a growing caseload.
"We are at capacity and will be actively fundraising to ramp up our legal staff," Mesa says. "The best way to support our community is by providing legal representation right now."
Mesa says hiring an immigration attorney can cost up to $10,000, which can devastate immigrant families financially, so providing those services for free alleviates substantial stress.
Mesa was born in Colombia and moved to Florida as a 6-year-old. She knows from personal experience the challenges immigrants face when applying for citizenship.
"It took me 30-plus years to become a citizen of this country, and it cost my family thousands of dollars that could have been invested in my education or for us to buy a home," Mesa says. "We never had disposable income because it was always directed towards somebody's immigration case, and it's exhausting."
Manzanita House is another local nonprofit that provides language services, community education, and legal services for immigrants. Last year, the nonprofit's staff provided legal services to over 700 individuals.
Samuel Smith, director of immigrant legal aid at Manzanita House, says the number of individuals served is increasing as the nonprofit adds staff.
Smith says he knows what the Trump team says it will do, but he's still unsure how the new administration will actually proceed.
Manzanita House is staying agile, ready to respond to changes in immigration policy. It's already adding workshops about immigrant rights and helping individuals plan for the potential deportation of family members in mixed-status families.
"We're trying our best to get good information into the community about the people's rights so they can best protect themselves, but also making sure that they have the ability and that they have the assistance in submitting applications for asylum," Smith says. "Or, if they're survivors of violence, [we're helping them] to start applying now so that they have something in the process to help provide at least a minimal level of protection."
Smith says he's seeing an increase in people inquiring about legal services or who previously inquired and now want to pursue legal status. He also anticipates more individuals reaching out to Manzanita House for the first time.
Demand for immigration services is expected to increase and far exceed the capacity of organizations in the area, Smith says. Regardless, Smith will provide immigration services as best as he and Manzanita House can.
ECONOMIC IMPACT
According to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey, as of 2022, Washington had 1,188,392 foreign-born immigrants living in the state, 606,946 of whom were noncitizens. Idaho had 115,978 residents born outside the U.S., of whom 62,354 were noncitizens.In September, Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador joined a lawsuit against the Biden administration's parole-in-place program claiming undocumented immigrants are straining resources such as education, public safety and medical care.
Immigration advocates such as Smith believe differently: He's seen immigrants motivated to start working and contributing to the workforce.
Smith says the image of asylum-seekers waiting for assistance in shelters is a problem created by the system: Asylum-seekers must wait at least six months before getting work authorization to start providing for themselves.
"The vast majority of people that I meet with, even as we're working towards permanent status and to residency and hopefully citizenship," Smith says, "their first priority, sometimes I feel their overriding priority, is to be able to get work authorization and be lawfully employed."
The American Immigration Council, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization, estimates that immigrant households contribute billions of dollars in federal, state and local taxes.
According to the Immigration Council's 2022 data, about 793,300 immigrants with and without legal status in Washington represent 19.3% of the state's labor force. Immigrant labor represents 77% of the state's agricultural workforce, 30.6% of STEM workers, and 17.3% of nurses.
About 254,500 undocumented immigrants in Washington account for 4.5% of the state's workforce. The same American Immigration Council report estimates undocumented immigrants in Washington contributed $2.3 billion in federal, state and local taxes yearly.
"Immigrants pay far more in taxes than they receive and benefit, and not just in taxes, but also they are oftentimes fulfilling roles of critical importance," Smith says.
According to the American Immigration Council, about 35,000 undocumented workers in Idaho made up about 28% of the state's agricultural workforce and contributed $261.3 million in taxes collected in Idaho in 2022.
Mark Finney is the executive director of Thrive International, which works primarily with individuals applying for humanitarian parole, asylum and temporary protected status. Finney says that immigrant communities contribute to critical industries like agriculture and medical care, and they were vital during the pandemic.
Locally, Thrive International has worked to relocate and house Ukrainian refugees, and Finney says the families it has helped are contributing to Spokane's economy.
"In Spokane, we've had over 1,000 Ukrainians that we serve who are now paying rent in their own apartments, working jobs, paying taxes, contributing to our society, right alongside everybody else," Finney says.
Regardless of who's in power federally, Finney says Thrive's work will continue.
"The fundamental nature of our work is driven by these global dynamics of mass migration, economic disparity and the brokenness of our immigration system," Finney says. "We're working in this space, and the administration doesn't change our mission all that much to help people move from surviving to thriving."
LEGAL CHALLENGES
Prioritizing deportation on a large scale is not new. The Obama administration removed more than 3 million people from the country over its eight years, according to the nonpartisan think tank Migration Policy Institute.Kristina Campbell, a Gonzaga University law professor and director of the Beatriz and Ed Schweitzer Border Justice Initiative, quickly points out that in her 22 years working in immigration law, Obama had the most aggressive deportation program of any president in recent decades, including Trump.
Campbell says she is concerned for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, recipients and those with temporary protected status. But, she says, the U.S. Constitution applies to all people in the country, and there are processes to protect individuals.
"Everybody has a right to due process. Everybody has a right to be treated fairly under our laws," Campbell says. "And I think a lot of our job will be to educate the community about what their rights are and just prepare people to be ready to seek help when they need it."
Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, now governor-elect, sued the previous Trump administration nearly 100 times. In 2019, Ferguson sued the Trump administration for using Washington courthouses to arrest immigrants with no violent history.
During his successful campaign for attorney general, Democrat Nick Brown told the Inlander that he would take up the mantle to sue any administration violating Washingtonians' rights.
Meanwhile, the ACLU of Idaho helps challenge rights violations in the state and organizes immigration workshops for immigrant communities each summer.
Rebecca De Leon, communications director for the ACLU of Idaho, says aggressive rhetoric against immigrants and Latinos isn't new, but she believes the rhetoric dehumanizes the population and puts their livelihoods at risk.
"The ACLU of Idaho is dedicated to ensuring that everyone's rights, as protected by the U.S. Constitution, are upheld," De Leon says. "Fundamental protections, such as due process, equal protection under the law, and the right to an attorney, apply to all individuals, regardless of immigration status. We aim to protect these constitutional rights, regardless of a person's immigration status."
A LIGHT IN THE DARK
With the aggressive rhetoric from the Trump administration advocating for mass deportation, many immigration advocates say it's time to come together.Ana Trusty is the interim executive director of Mujeres in Action, a local nonprofit that works with survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, mainly from the Latin community. She says that community faces many hardships and challenges, but immigrants are resilient and know what they must do for their families.
"Undocumented folks are hard workers. They know that they need to work just as hard, or even harder, hold two to three jobs to make sure that they're putting food on the table and keeping a roof over their head," Trusty says.
Trusty says that everyone must collectively come together and lean on each other. She wants the immigrant and Latino communities to educate themselves on their rights.
"We are people with rights, and we have always had that tenacity to move forward, work hard and do what's right," Trusty says. "We need to humanize each other, and maybe just disconnect from that rhetoric and disconnect from those sources that are sharing those messages so we can start to be human again because we're losing that."
Campbell feels the same way. She points out that many nonprofits are doing great work to address fears and provide help for the immigrant community. She wants people to remember that many of those who could be affected by Trump's goals are our neighbors, friends and colleagues.
"I think we need to look to each other for strength, and I hope that we will," Campbell says. "I hope that this time, right when people are scared and in crisis, we will look to one another and learn to trust one another, lean on one another, and get through this together rather than turn on one another." ♦