As your constituents and King County Residents, we insist once again that you submit a 90-day emergency housing permit to Kent City Government, a goal the majority of Kent officials currently support. We additionally demand that you stop sending security guards to harass campers, supporters, and incoming asylum seekers with no other refuge. Until you provide current residents with long-term and dignified housing in a legally-binding document, the migrants and their supporters will have no choice but to live and work next to the Econo Lodge.

On 7/19/2024, several unarmed and mostly plainclothes security guards entered Kent Camp, insisting that they represented the county even though they refused to state which office sent them; the guards remain as of today. Conducting a war of attrition on the 100 migrants remaining in the camp – including 20 children – these men have refused to allow essential items like tents, canopies, a refrigerator for meat, and lawn chairs beyond the fences, even destroying a barrier campers used for privacy while showering. According to campers, security staff ominously stated that the asylum seekers would not have to stay there for much longer and that they merely wanted to curtail “long-term camping.” A slow sweep is still a sweep even if gradual immiseration takes the place of dump trucks and police.

The county had enough money to hire these antagonistic security guards yet conveniently failed to provide explicit, written, and long-term housing plans for Kent Camp residents. We will not allow silence, deflection, and empty moral posturing on the part of county officials to make us forget about the vacant motel next door, a property that King County owns.