What you can do:
- Sign up for a training to join the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network’s (WAISN) rapid response team. The next training is: today, Thursday, June 26, at 6 pm. You can sign up at this link.
- To report suspected ICE activity to WAISN, call or text the Deportation Defense Hotline at 1-844-724-3737. The hotline is open Monday-Friday, 6:00 am to 6:00 pm.
When Jeff DeBray received a call early this summer reporting suspected ICE activity, he showed up to the scene to verify the report and was shocked at the presence of military-sized vehicles for the detainment of a single individual.
“The militarization of our government against immigrants, I saw that in front of my own eyes,” DeBray said.
While ICE detains these individuals, DeBray said all he can do is watch and try to provide support to people who are often alone at that moment.
“All we can do is sit there and watch ICE attack immigrants and then try to provide them with as many resources afterwards by witnessing, recording and communicating with family members of the individuals that was detained,” DeBray said. “So, I felt scared, I felt sad, I felt angry for them.”
DeBray was there that day as part of the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network (WAISN) rapid response team, which verifies reported ICE activity and documents the activity that is seen to create a record of ICE actions. DeBray said that the importance and urgency of these teams’ work is increased given the historic state aggression toward migrant communities carried out under the Trump administration.
Formed in 2016 when a coalition of immigrant organizations joined forces, WAISN is the largest immigrant-led coalition in the state, working to protect and advance the rights of immigrants and refugees in our communities, according to its website. WAISN’s tactics take a multi-pronged approach, both actively defending immigrant communities from deportation and advocating for policy reforms to further immigrant rights.
“[WAISN] has been a really important source of support,” said DeBay, a lead coordinator for the rapid response team in Spokane and Eastern Washington Director of Fuse, a progressive organization and member of the Spokane Immigrant Rights Coalition with connections to WAISN’s work. “They provide the infrastructure for us to deliver [support] for our community.”
Part of WAISN’s deportation defense work includes maintaining a Deportation Defense Hotline where individuals can report ICE activity within their communities. Through these reports, WAISN confirmed four ICE operations in May, including 20 individual detentions and one workplace raid of a beverage warehouse in Kent, Washington, where ICE arrested 17 people on Tuesday, May 20. They also tracked 13 unconfirmed reports.
“Our updates reflect what’s reported to the WAISN Deportation Defense hotline and help us to keep our communities informed and empowered,” WAISN said on its Instagram. “Immigration enforcement isn’t just raids or arrests. It’s also unmarked vehicles parked near schools and homes, officers walking through neighborhoods and quiet acts of surveillance that instill fear.”
Beyond reporting suspected ICE activity, average people can boost their involvement by joining the organization’s rapid response team. hadley morrow, a volunteer with WAISN’s rapid response team in Spokane, said bearing witness is crucial to making sure ICE follows the law.
“Any institution that’s so emboldened that they get to have the right to disappear people deserves an American citizenry that is watching it,” morrow said. “It doesn’t sit well with me that there are people in Spokane right now who are afraid to leave their homes and afraid to go to work and afraid to go to school because of the way that ICE is behaving, and feeling as though that may go unregulated or unchecked in a lot of ways feels deeply un-American to me.”
morrow said WAISN’s work is both urgent and stressful, and the organization needs many hands to share the burden of that work.
“We need bodies,” morrow said. “One of the risks is burnout. The people who jumped at this really quickly were the people who are already supporting immigrants and refugees, who are already under-resourced to do so, who are closer to the fear and the impact. If we’re going to sustain another three and a half years of this energy, it will require more people at all sorts of diversified levels to get involved. Any level helps.”
DeBray said that while volunteering may seem daunting, individuals don’t have to be “a hero” to show up and have an impact.
“What is needed the most is for allies to show up,” DeBray said. “Being there is most of the ask at this point.”
While WAISN runs statewide operations, providing training to rapid response teams, it also partners closely with local organizations throughout the state, including the Spokane Immigrant Rights Coalition (SIRC), which oversees much of the organizing and infrastructure of immigrant defense and support on a local level. To achieve its mission of advancing equity for all through the empowerment of immigrant communities, SIRC provides direct support for immigrants beyond the rapid response teams’ work of verification and documentation.
“SIRC is really coordinating how to make sure we’re not just showing up to watch people get taken by ICE or showing up to people’s appointments and then leaving them without resources,” morrow said. “SIRC is really trying to make sure that people feel like they belong here and have the resources to stay here.”
Currently, SIRC is collecting donations for its Community Justice Fund, which pays for basic living costs for immigrants who can’t work because they fear deportation. The fund also helps cover legal fees, transportation to court and medical expenses. You can donate to the SIRC Community Justice Fund at this link.
