KENT, Wash. — Inside a Kent hotel room, two mothers, both named Adriana, will be the first to say they don’t have answers.
“Even now, we don’t know how much time we're going to have to camp. We don’t have these answers. We can’t tell anyone what we’re doing because we don’t know ourselves,” Adriana Medina said in Spanish.
More than 100 asylum seekers, including many children, say they plan to camp in a Seattle park Monday night as hotel funding has run out -- most of them are from Venezuela, and some are from the Republic of Congo.
Adriana Medina and Adriana Figueira crossed into the United States via the southern border and made it to Washington state, where they took shelter inside a Tukwila church. From there, a move to Kent, where King County subsidized hotel stays until about three weeks ago when the program ran out of funding.
They prepared to camp, but less than 24 hours later a private donor extended their stay. Fast forward to today and they’re moving out again.
“My kids, all the kids in this community are suffering in this situation, it’s a shame that they can’t go to school like kids their age,” Medina said.
“There are organizations that want to help us but there is nothing set in stone, just words and words,” Figueira added.
Governor Inslee’s office says members of his staff and the staff from the Office of Refugee and Immigrant Assistance are engaged with people on the ground -- adding that the legislature has upped the budget to help new arrivals to the state by $32 million.
In a statement, Kristin Elia, a spokesperson for the King County Executive Office, said the county is “currently working with the nonprofit organizations on finalizing the contracts. Once the contracts are in place, grantees will be reimbursed for eligible expenses related to supporting unsheltered asylum-seekers,” adding that they expect to have contracts and funding in place by mid-May.”
Families who say they have no option but to wait.
“The situation in Venezuela is very difficult – very, very difficult for everyone, that’s why you have to look for a way out,” Medina said.
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