Northwest Immigrant Rights Project

Gracias por compartir información importante y recursos valiosos para nuestra comunidad! 🙌🏽

We are deeply grateful for your generosity and for standing with our community. Having strong community support during these pivotal times is essential — it’s what allows us to keep doing the work, and it’s vital in the ongoing fight for justice and equity. ✊🏽

Many members of NWIRP's Wenatchee staff wearing matching green shirts stand together in a wooded forest with yellow leaves on the trees.

Our Solidarity Social at Icicle Ridge Winery is coming up next Wednesday, and we’d love for you to join us.

✨We hope you can gather with us as we reaffirm our joint commitment to equity and justice for all.

The event is free, with a suggested donation of $75.

RSVP here ➡ bit.ly/3HH5jn7

Working with non-profits to further civil rights, moderated by Supreme Court Justice Sal Mungia.

Please join us for a CLE July 31 at Seattle U to learn how private sector attorneys can help non-profits further civil rights for people in Washington state. The event is moderated by Justice Sal Mungia.

www.mywsba.org/PersonifyEbusiness/Default.aspx?TabID=1356&productId=26577224

Immigration agency flexes authority to sharply expand detention without bond hearing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is moving to detain far more people than before, tapping a legal authority to jail anyone who entered the country illegally.

Matt Adams, legal director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, said the administration is “adopting a draconian interpretation of the statute” to jail people who may have lived in the U.S. for decades, have no criminal history and have U.S. citizen spouses, children and grandchildren.

Unfortunately, many community members missed their hearings. Missing your immigration court hearing will likely result in a deportation order and increase your risk of being arrested. Please visit NWIRP's Know Your Rights page for more information.

nwirp.org/resources/kyr/

Yesterday, we received a credible report that ICE enforcement officers would be present at the Seattle immigration court. Our team and volunteers quickly mobilized to support community members attending their court hearings. ICE enforcement officers were not present and there were no arrests made.

“A lot of what this administration is doing is attempting to send a message through its arrests [and] through its removals,” he said. “It shouldn’t shock anyone that who they are targeting for arrest is part and parcel of the larger effort to intimidate, exact retribution, and send a message.”

Ice ‘politically targeted’ farm worker activist Juarez Zeferino, colleagues say Detention comes amid Trump crackdown against perceived political enemies, including immigrants and labor organizers

"Aaron Korthuis, an attorney at the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, who is representing Juarez Zeferino in the class-action lawsuit, said he did not doubt the activist was a political target."

As pushback grows to WA immigration court arrests, ICE changes tactics ICE spent weeks at immigration court. No longer, a sign of changing methods that are breaking norms, sowing confusion and sparking evolving pushback.

Last week, we stopped seeing ICE presence at the Seattle immigration court. Unfortunately, it seems that instead of getting the message that we don't want them in our community, they have simply adjusted their tactics.

New Washington laws strengthen protections for immigrant communities amid federal attacks The legislative session in Olympia this year was dominated by a focus on the biennial budget. But between discussions of funding cuts and new taxes,...

In the midst of so much terrible news, we are proud that Washington State legislators have passed several new laws to protect immigrant and worker rights in our state. These laws provide more state oversight at the detention center in Tacoma, provide important protections for workers, and more.

NWIRP is proud that it is able to help educate the community about their constitutional rights and the immigration benefits that our laws provide, and is committed to assisting individuals in exercising those legal rights.

NWIRP is proud that it is able to help educate the community about their constitutional rights and the immigration benefits that our laws provide, and is committed to assisting individuals in exercising those legal rights. This is overlaid over the final page of the letter we received, which includes signatures from the Chairman of the Committee as well as the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability.

We thank all of those who stand with us and support us in defending and advancing the rights of immigrants. This text sits above an image of all our staff gathered in a beautiful meadow with tall pine trees smiling.

It is a sad reflection on our current government that efforts to defend constitutional and statutory rights are labeled as efforts to undermine the federal government.

Our response to a recent oversight letter NWIRP received today from the Committee on Homeland Security written in text overlaid in front of the seal of the United States of America

NWIRP, like many of our partners across the country, received this "oversight" letter yesterday from the Committee of Homeland Security, from the U.S. House of Representatives. This is overlaid over the first page of the letter we received.

It states that "the Committee is concerned that certain NGOs are now actively advising [undocumented noncitizens] on how to avoid and impede law enforcement officials, which can only be seen as an attempt to undermine the work [of the] federal government." This is overlaid over the second page of the letter we received from the Committee.

This is just the latest example of what can only be described as authoritarian efforts to intimidate all those who do not share the administration's anti-immigrant agenda. This is overlaid over the 3rd page of the letter we received from the committee.

Our response to a recent "oversight" letter NWIRP received today from the Committee on Homeland Security.

Thank you to the many community members who reached out to their elected officials and other leaders about this unfair practice. We are back in and ready to continue informing our client communities of our rights!

This restriction has since be rescinded and all our staff and volunteers are again permitted to enter the building and assist the community. If you are volunteering with NWIRP, we ask that you check in on the 4th floor lobby of the immigration court for additional instructions.

This morning, NWIRP staff members and volunteers who have been providing Know Your Rights materials and consultations to community members at the immigration court in Seattle were told they would be restricted from entering without an appointment. Attorneys with appointments were permitted to enter.

Some Americans Have Already Been Caught in Trump’s Immigration Dragnet. More Will Be. Federal immigration authorities have a history of wrongfully detaining U.S. citizens. Advocates warn that the Trump administration’s immigration policies mean that more citizens will get caught up in…

While ICE agents can note in their database if someone they’ve investigated turns out to be a citizen, they are not required to do so.

As a result, records are often wrong and left uncorrected even after agents have been told of a mistake.

(Published March 2025)

NWIRP Executive Director Malou Chávez spoke with @msnbc.com about the confusion and fear our communities are experiencing because of the Presidential Administration's many attacks on their due process rights.

www.msnbc.com/chris-jansin...

‘Another layer of cruelty’: WA immigrant communities shaken by Trump travel ban The Seattle region has large numbers of people from several of the countries named in the ban, including Afghanistan, Somalia, Eritrea and Iran.

We are heartbroken to see immigrant communities under attack, again. This new travel ban, despite exceptions, sends a clear message of exclusion, undermines family reunification, and endangers lives.

www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

ICE Official Reveals Miserable Conditions for U.S. Immigrants at Djibouti Prison A top ICE official said illness is common at Camp Lemonnier, with inadequate medical care and exposure to smoke from burn pits.

These community members are in Djibouti only because DHS violated the terms of a federal district court order requiring DHS to provide them with due process before deporting them to a country that was not listed on their removal orders.

Analysis of Trump's New Travel Ban Analysis of the June 4, 2025, proclamation imposing visa and travel restrictions on 19 countries.

Our partners at @immcouncil.org have prepared an analysis of the latest travel ban.

Heartbreaking! Reporting suggests that the facility is currently operating nearly 300 PERCENT above capacity, with 1,700 people crammed into a facility with an official maximum capacity of 600. The conditions have devolved dramatically in the last few months, threatening health and safety.

In Seattle, appeals court grapples with Trump birthright citizenship order The arguments at the courtroom in downtown Seattle were far different from a few months ago when a judge called Trump's order "blatantly unconstitutional."

Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit heard arguments from NWIRP and the State of Washington defending the district court’s finding that the Executive Order is a blatant violation of the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, guaranteeing U.S. citizenship to all who are born in the United States.

🚨🚨🚨 In the last two hours, the Trump admin:

- Banned all immigrant visas from 19 countries, including Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela
- Banned all student and researcher visas to Harvard
- Colluded with Texas to kick 20,000 undocumented college students off of in-state tuition.

Our May Newsletter is now live! In this month's issue:

> ICE presence in immigration courthouses
> The latest on NWIRP's ongoing class action suits
> Upcoming free immigration webinars
> Resources for immigrants
> How we stay determined in the face of injustice

Sea-Tac Airport Detentions Prompt Travel Warnings for Washington Green-Card Holders An Olympia father returning from the Philippines was detained at Sea-Tac Airport — part of a pattern advocates say is targeting green-card holders under renewed federal enforcement. Immigration groups...

We have seen an increase in the number of green-card holders being detained at ports of entry like Sea-Tac airport. This week, NWIRP Deputy Director Vanessa Gutierrez spoke about the issue with the South Seattle Emerald.

A Seattle immigration attorney on ICE and your rights - Soundside An attorney with the Northwest Immigrant Right Project talks about ICE and your rights, regardless of a person's legal status.

Supervising Attorney Henry Hwang spoke with @kuow.org's Soundside podcast about your rights if stopped by immigration officers like ICE. Check it out at the link below!

How WA advocates are reacting to a new ICE tactic People mobilized at Seattle Immigration Court to advise immigrants of their rights and support those taken away in what appears to be a new tactic to fast-track removals.

Immigrants deserve due process, which is why our staff has been present this week at the Seattle Immigration Court to warn and inform community members that ICE officers are trying to place people whose cases have been dismissed in expedited removal proceedings.

IRS participates in immigration raid at Kent beverage company In one of the first immigration raids involving the Internal Revenue Service, federal agents arrested 17 people at a Kent beverage manufacturing company Tuesday.

Yesterday's ICE raid in Kent also involved the IRS, and at least one person from the raid is now being held at the detention center in Tacoma. We are heartbroken for those who were impacted yesterday, as well as their families.

www.spokesman.com/stories/2025...