TUKWILA — Already, a second family has arrived today seeking shelter.
It’s just after 2 p.m. on a recent Tuesday, and a father, mother and 7-year-old girl have arrived in a black sedan at Riverton Park United Methodist Church in Tukwila. Over the past year, the church has been forced to serve as a makeshift refuge for hundreds of asylum seekers from Angola, Congo and Venezuela in lieu of government responses that meet the scale of the need.
Wearing thin jackets and not much else, the family was picked up from Sea-Tac International Airport by someone staying at a nearby homeless shelter where other migrants and asylum seekers live.
Carlo and his family fled Venezuela because of the collapsed economy and ongoing political unrest, he said through an interpreter. He asked not to use his last name, fearing that doing so may jeopardize his family’s chance for asylum.
A refugee shelter in San Antonio, Texas, sent them to Tukwila, telling Carlo that his family would find more help at this church. But looking around, he’s beginning to wonder if that’s true.
A spiraling crisis is unfolding at the church, as dozens sleep inside the building or in some of the tiny homes on the grounds, while hundreds more sleep in tents spread across the property, withstanding numbing temperatures and steady Pacific Northwest rain. The church did not ask nor advertise for people seeking an avenue to stay in the U.S., and its pastor is bewildered why people continue to be referred here from out of state.
But agencies that work with immigrants and refugees — both of whom have different legal circumstances than asylum seekers — as well as elected officials have been unwilling to accept responsibility for the growing population in Tukwila, so the church has accepted the burden since last December rather than turn people in need away.
Local and state officials were first notified by the church of the situation in the spring, a few months into people arriving. The state said it has prepared for crowds as large as New York or Chicago, but that hasn’t happened yet, meaning a full emergency response isn’t warranted. Because the crowd that does exist is outside Seattle limits, Seattle-specific agencies say they can’t help. King County has said that it’s mainly Tukwila’s problem, while Tukwila says it can’t solve this problem alone.
What assistance has begun to trickle in is not enough to get everyone indoors.
And even if the residents manage to find housing and work in the United States, they face a long and onerous road to obtaining asylum.
After arriving at the church, Carlo’s family is whisked away to the Rev. Jan Bolerjack’s office to fill out an intake form with a staff member.
All around them is noise and chaos, as toddlers, children and adults bustle about to keep busy and try to create scraps of normalcy despite the extraordinary circumstances.
The church’s main social hall has become a Swiss Army knife, equal parts social service agency, kitchen, playground, mess hall and sleeping quarters.
Everywhere there are people, and everywhere there is stuff.
Stacks of foam mattress toppers and nylon dormitory beds line the hall for easy access at night. One room over, racks of clothes and shopping carts of items — books, lamps, board games, fake plants, glass vases, shoes, diapers — fill the sanctuary, most of which will be moved Saturday evening for service, still held each Sunday. Stashes of canned goods, toys, towels and more are tucked beneath tables and benches.
It’s uncomfortably stuffy inside, a mingling of damp clothes, cooking fumes, constant chatter, persistent coughs and warm bodies. But outside is unquestionably worse.
The church’s once-grassy plot has become a slick mud field in the heavy rain of recent weeks, with rows and rows of tents fruitlessly propped on wood pallets and blanketed in blue tarps. Trails of wood chips snake through the encampment, pathways to help residents find their footing in this slippery sludge. One resident shovels damp dirt to create a kind of barrier around his tent, hoping to better stake an outdoor canopy and limit the water that slips in.
The church finds new breaking points each day, scrambling to stretch its already paper-thin resources and staff just a bit further.
After months of city, county and state officials dragging their feet, the Metropolitan King County Council last week allocated $3 million to fund 100 hotel rooms that will serve as temporary shelter for asylum seekers through June 2024. This week, 10 families each day will be moved over to a DoubleTree a few miles away. Priority will go to people who are pregnant and families with young children.
It’s badly needed relief, Bolerjack said. But still, she worries.
The population is now hovering around 500 people. Nearly every day, new people arrive.
Less than an hour after Carlo’s family arrived, another family showed up — the third this day. A husband and wife with three children, the family also came from Venezuela.
They manage to flag down Bolerjack, always busy addressing a seemingly endless list of tasks and requests. Another resident serves as an intermediary, holding up his phone with a translation app open.
“We have nowhere else to go,” the disembodied robotic voice reads out.
Bolerjack nods.
“We’re going to take care of you,” Bolerjack tells them. Holding her face with one hand, she turns to find a staff member who can get the two new families situated with fleece-lined blankets.
Another asylum seeker observes the drama unfolding. “Why is the pastor keep accepting new people?” she wonders aloud.
The answer is simple.
“If I could send them someplace else, I would,” Bolerjack later said in an interview, sinking into her office chair as three children played with wood toys at her feet. “That’s why I keep taking them, because there’s no place else to take them.”
Washington has almost no resources for people who come here seeking asylum from violence or persecution in their home country. There are state and local offices dedicated to helping refugees, who are granted a political designation that comes with legal papers, housing, employment and other supports before they arrive in the U.S.
In October, Seattle, King County and state officials met and promised they would look into whether some of these supports could also be applied to the unprecedented increase in asylum seekers. But they have offered few updates since.
A homeless services nonprofit, Low Income Housing Institute, operates the tiny home village next to Riverton, and has helped asylum seekers move into some of this shelter. But the homelessness system in the Seattle region is already often at capacity and offers little specifically for immigrants.
‘A vulnerable situation’
On that recent Tuesday, a housing navigator from a local nonprofit was posted up in the church’s office downstairs, filling out applications one by one. A gaggle of men lingered outside the office door, waiting for their turn.
Among the hopeful applicants was Ricardo Filipe Ussopa, a 24-year-old asylum seeker from Angola. Ussopa arrived at the church three months ago. Previously in Boston by way of San Diego, he found the address of the church online while searching for a new shelter to go to.
“I thought it was better for me to come here,” Ussopa said through an interpreter, as he waited in the stairwell to apply.
He sleeps in a tent outside on the property, worried each night that his certificates and identifying documents may end up soaked by the rain. A single man in good health, Ussopa knows he’s lower on the priority list for assistance. Some men have waited nearly a year to leave, a frustrating system that Bolerjack said she’s trying to address.
“Truly I had no idea how long I would stay here,” Ussopa said. “It’s a vulnerable situation.”
The asylum seekers find themselves in bureaucratic limbo. Securing asylum often requires addressing a constellation of needs — stable housing, robust legal aid, mental health and medical care, translation services and case management.
To secure asylum, they need to be granted the status by an immigration judge or by an asylum officer. To have the best shot at winning their case, they need legal representation. To afford a lawyer, and housing in the meantime, they need money. To earn money, they need a job. To get a job, they need a work permit. To receive a work permit, they must file an application for work authorization. To get work authorization, they must wait about six months after submitting an asylum application. To complete the lengthy and detailed asylum application, they must wait for volunteer attorneys, paralegals and interpreters to visit the church — or file in English on their own and risk making minor errors or introducing inconsistencies that jeopardize their case.
Even after all that, the process requires immense patience, as the courts and legal system have become overwhelmed with cases. As of September, there are at least 2 million pending asylum applications in the United States. Last year, the average backlog wait time from case filing to hearing before an immigration court judge was about four years, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
That day, there will be more waiting. Bolerjack came downstairs to deliver the bad news: The office was closed for the day. The update caused a flash of tempers.
Days go by slowly
Watching the commotion unfold was Tamara, a Venezuelan asylum seeker who arrived with her son, seated in a folding chair nearby.
Tamara asked not to use her last name for fear of retaliation because she fled political persecution in her home country and violence in Colombia.
Wintry weather has arrived, and freezing nighttime temperatures and hurricane-like winds have made an already dismal situation unbearable. Most here have never lived in a place so cold. “We’re afraid something might happen to us, that a tree might fall on us, that a car will roll,” Tamara said through an interpreter. She has been sleeping outside for two months, she said.
The days go by slowly, as she waits for some relief.
“I spend my time here cleaning because I feel like I’m doing something,” Tamara said. “I clean the bathrooms, I clean the kitchen, clean all these stairs — I clean, clean, clean.”
By 3:30 p.m., the early-afternoon white noise of the shelter gave way to a wall of sound as school-aged children made their way in.
Children laughed, running laps around toddlers who squealed with delight. Men razzed each other, finding ways to punctuate their boredom. One woman styled another’s hair, patiently working wefts of hair extensions into neat braids. Plastic tubs clattered. Mismatched chairs scraped against the floor.
One woman cooked an early dinner on a hot plate, seasoned chicken sizzling in oil, before letting the next person use the hot plate for their own meal. Nearby, Scotch tape labels with red marker identify the contents of a stainless steel hot water dispenser, one on top of the other — “LEITE,” “LECHE,” “MILK.” Soon, bowls of soup were distributed to some of the asylum seekers.
Weaving in and out of the crowds was Daniel Vingo, 35, an asylum seeker who arrived in late September and was recently moved into a hotel room. With his English fluency, he has since become a community leader here, serving as translator, social worker and morale booster. In his hand, he clutches a stack of mail to pass out to residents.
Like others here, Vingo fled political persecution in Angola. He was an activist calling for independence for Cabinda, where he was born. The disputed exclave, considered a province by the Angolan government, has been entrenched in a decades-long armed conflict over its sovereignty after Portugal withdrew from Angola and Cabinda in 1975.
Angolan security forces have intensified crackdowns on protests in recent years, killing dozens of activists in 2021 and arresting and torturing others, according to Amnesty International and OMUNGA, an Angolan human rights organization.
The threat of death forced Vingo, who cofounded an activist group in Angola’s capital, to make the difficult journey to the United States. After flying into Brazil and making the perilous journey north, he crossed the Mexico-U.S. border in September.
For a moment, he rests on a pew, one of several commandeered from the sanctuary now in the social hall. It’s been a long day, and it isn’t even 4 p.m.
“I’m fine, by the grace of God,” he said, before getting up. There was more work to do.
Nearby, Carlo sits at a picnic table. Someone had procured a small cheese pizza, which his family promptly scarfed down. Now, watching his daughter play with a plastic truck with another child, the reality of their situation was dawning on him.
“We don’t have anyone’s help,” Carlo said through an interpreter.
Today, Carlo’s family will get to sleep inside, a staff member tells him. Tomorrow, outside. Carlo asks for clothes for his daughter. It’s so cold, he explains.
