The number of migrants at a Tukwila church grows, as cold weather sets in

Around 350 migrants are camped out in front of Riverton Park United Methodist Church in Tukwila. That's nearly double the number of migrants since the City of Tukwila announced a state of emergency in response to the camp last month.

There’s only a few ways people at the church can get out of the cold. Church organizers say a private individual could offer a space in their home or help pay for a motel, or locally run government-funded housing programs could help people pay a deposit and for a portion of the first few months rent.

Jean-Paul Yafali is with Nested Communities, a nonprofit that helps people navigate the housing process. He was once an asylum seeker as well, and has navigated the housing system.

He said he knows people camping outside the church are facing a countdown.

“If you are outside and have been living outside in a tent like this for more than a year, that becomes chronic homelessness,” he said. “It becomes really hard for you to access services.”

Yafali said at that point, people experiencing chronic homelessness need to have a specialist attend to their case.

He’s wary of other non-medical service nonprofits in the area and thinks they take-up time and resources that should be spent on getting people to focus on applying for asylum and getting into housing.

The second part of the problem is that to get people into housing programs, they need to have an income to pay rent. But many can’t do that easily because they don’t have work authorization yet. There’s pandemic era assistance programs that let people access EBT cards, but that’s not going to pay rent.

A few asylum seekers have been placed in a motel, and others have gone to a shelter in Burien, but that's only temporary.

A local government task force has formed but right now there is no current “systemic” infrastructure to help people camping outside the Tukwila church quickly.

Hamdi Mohamed, the Director of Seattle’s Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, said it takes time to build infrastructure to assist the migrants.

“It’s especially difficult to do in a situation with many unknowns,” she said. “For example, there is no way to predict how many migrants will make their way to our region and in what time frame, or when they will be able to obtain work permits and be self-sufficient.”

Church organizers report varying numbers on how many people are arriving. Some say from five to 10 people have been arriving daily, but those daily numbers vary. Some days it can just be one.

RELATED: For these asylum seekers, a Tukwila Church offers temporary comfort and refuge

Sarah Peterson works alongside Mohamed on the state’s task force as the Washington state refugee coordinator at the Office of Refugee and Immigrant Assistance. She acknowledged that the migrants in Tukwila are in uncharted territory.

“Sheltering and caring for asylum seekers is a new body of work that no federal, state, or local agency currently holds,” she wrote in an email.

“The expertise required to tackle the issue at hand, includes emergency management, sheltering, transitional and long-term housing, and other resettlement services. In addition, there is a lack of federal resources available to tackle the current situation. The state and localities are working together to rapidly build infrastructure and pick-up the cost of caring for arriving asylum seekers.”

Earlier this month representatives and senators from the state of Washington signed onto a letter addressed to the administrator of FEMA, Deanna Criswell, asking for an expansion on who can qualify for the Shelter Services Program, which was started for similar situations in other U.S. cities.