At Kent Camp, King County Government Sweeps Over 150 Asylum Seekers Without Notice

September 24th, 2024 – After four months of resisting a potential sweep, white nationalists, cold rains, hostile bureaucratic neglect, and almost a week of King County refusing to service fetid porta potties, the asylum seekers residing next to the defunct Kent EconoLodge finally watched county staff throw their few possessions and legal documents into dumpsters. The sweep destroyed at least $20,000 of camping equipment, food, and clothing, much of it toppled over by a county bulldozer. No doubt emboldened by City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, King County officials and Kent City Council destroyed a camp designed to protest the chronic lack of dignified housing for immigrants in the Seattle metro area; King County owns multiple former motels that it refuses to use as emergency housing, including the Kent EconoLodge until earlier this month.

Accompanied by the implicit threat posed by county sherrifs, King County Executive staff who visited the EconoLodge campsite claimed that they would provide motel rooms for all those residing in the camp, but they only counted those present in the camp at the time workers arrived. Asylum seekers at work or school were not included in absentia and currently lack motel rooms, including some families with children. Personnel carrying out the sweep exclusively permitted residents who were home to gather necessary items like legal documents; those who were elsewhere retrieved nothing. Even immigrants who obtained housing face terrible uncertainty. Families with children can stay in motels for a measly two months, and individuals the county considers single adults have rooms for only five days. Promising motel rooms without specifying the time in which camp residents could stay there, county staff deceived single adults into abandoning Kent Camp, only then revealing that they would remain housed for less than a week after locking them out of the camp fence. Such de facto family separation disregards extended families, chosen families, relationships among adult siblings, and adult children caring for elderly parents. Kent Camp residents and members of Coalition Dignidad Migrante – a collection of organizations formed by immigrants and their supporters to fight for asylum seeker rights and resources – demand the following from King County:

1. Dignified housing in motel rooms for at least 6 months so that asylum seekers can undertake the arduous asylum application process in peace

2. Housing for all asylum seekers at Kent Camp regardless of family structure

3. Housing that considers other needs like the availability of food and the ability to prepare it

4. Full usage of all Health Through Housing properties and currently vacant motels owned by the county; they should serve unhoused citizens and new immigrants alike, for there are enough resources to house everyone

5. Housing in locations that allow asylum seekers and supporters to maintain the communities that allow them to survive and advocate for themselves; current arrangements disperse them across multiple counties