Washington immigrants, rights activists prep for Trump's promised ICE raids

President-elect Trump’s mass deportation promises are coming into clearer focus, with policy shifting to allow immigration officials into hospitals, schools, and churches. For people in the state of Washington, work is underway to prepare for and fight those mass immigration enforcement raids, especially if they overstep Constitutional rights.

The Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network, or WAISN, is a group of legal, labor, and immigrant rights groups that shares what legal resources immigrants have, what rights they’re entitled to by law, and notifies and documents when Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, officials and local agencies are working together.

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Adam Dibba was one of about 400 people at a recent watch party in the Seattle area to train people about how to deal with the anticipated ICE raids. Dibba said she’s planning to connect with WAISN organizers to help expand the network.

“We don't have to work in a silo,” she said. “We have to work together.”

Dibba is no stranger to the immigrant experience. She immigrated to the U.S. more than 25 years ago from Gambia and recently applied for her citizenship. Over those years she’s raised a family, and spent time organizing through various immigrant, and union groups. Now she leads Africans on the Eastside, a community group for African immigrants like her in Bellevue.

More than 40% of the population in Bellevue is foreign born, according to city data from 2022. That includes people who are documented and undocumented immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. Immigrant advocates like Dibba worry that on top of immigration officials targeting specifically undocumented immigrants, the incoming Trump administration will also target federal immigration programs that have given people a leg up in the naturalization process.

On the campaign trail, Trump questioned the legal status of immigrants who have federal authorization to be in the country but aren't considered U.S. residents or citizens.

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While the focus of immigration is often on people from Latin America crossing the southern border, Dibba said the Seattle area immigrant population is much more diverse.

“I think most people just know a little bit about the migrants through [El] Salvador and [other Latin-American Countries] but we have a lot of people who are from Niger, Gambia… Senegal,” she said.

It’s not just her immediate neighborhood that Dibba is planning to share this info with. Organizers in African community groups in New York and Philadelphia are attending and learning from what Washington state is building.

“We have built something in Washington state that can be replicated,” said Brenda Rodríguez López, the executive director of WAISN.

Other members of the network include Asian, Muslim, Jewish, Latino, and labor groups in the state, but they’re also taking notes from what other people are doing outside of the state, Rodríguez López said.

“There's so much knowledge, there's so much wisdom within our movements that I think it's a beautiful thing that we are speaking to one another and wanting to learn,” she said.

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Rodríguez López expects sweeping immigration changes will take effect days after Trump is sworn into the presidency, but will take months to play out.

Over the next few months WAISN will be holding trainings on how families can prepare if a parent is suddenly deported, and what other rights people have, regardless of immigration status.

“It's important for people to know what they are, and what are the protections that they have under the Constitution especially in times where immigrants, undocumented people, are being targeted and there is a lot of fear that's being placed in our communities,” Rodríguez López said.