by Lauryn Bray

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Ninety Venezuelan families, part of the community of refugees who formerly lived in tents on the grounds of the Riverton Park United Methodist Church, must vacate their hotel rooms at Kent’s Quality Inn by Tuesday, Jan. 30. The group of families, comprising about 170 individuals, were picked up from the church by the local nonprofit Save the Kids and placed in hotel rooms during the drop in temperature a few weeks ago.

Adriana, one of the 170 refugees living at the Quality Inn, said through an interpreter, “What we’re looking for is an answer — for support from the government.”

On Sunday, Jan. 28, in the parking lot of Kent’s Quality Inn, a press conference was held to garner support to prevent the displacement. The group says they refuse to return to their tents on the rat- and bug-infested lawn and are requesting support through housing, employment, and legal assistance.

Adriana said, “We’re requesting help with our immigration papers to be able to plan our asylum applications. The other [request] is to have a living place with dignity. We’re also looking for work and for help with unemployment.”

Despite being part of a chain, the hotel is a family business independently owned and operated by Eli Min, who says an extended stay for the 90 families will put a huge strain on the hotel’s finances.

“This has been a huge financial burden on us, and we are asking for help,” said Min. If King County does not step in to provide additional assistance, the Min family has made it clear that by Tuesday, the group must find a new place to live.

“There are deadlines set. We cannot unfortunately stay here forever unless there are resources brought our way,” explained Min. “We cannot do it as one single family, so we’re asking everybody out there to please help and support this project.”

A Long Way From Home

Faida is the only Colombian in the group, and out of the 170 individuals, he is part of a small group of people who came to America without any immediate family. Following the press conference, he told the Emerald through tears, “I want to share that a lot of us here are single, and we might not have families here, but we have kids back home. We have mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers.”

Faida left his son, his parents, and his siblings in Colombia with hopes he could work and save enough money to one day bring them to America. “It’s always been my hope to help my family get forward in life — that’s been my motivation.”

Faida is from a small village where crime, poverty, and unemployment are universal experiences. “[I came to the United States] because of the crime that’s happening in my country and the lack of jobs. There’s a lot of crime that happens there, but it’s because of the poverty,” said Faida.

However, with the limited resources he has in a country in which he does not know the language, Faida says finding a job without the proper support is impossible. “It’s very stressful to live with the reality that if you leave the hotel to go search for a job or better opportunities, you don’t know if you’re gonna come back and your room will be emptied out — if you can even go back to where you’re staying,” explained Faida. “We really are just asking for even a little bit of support, because it’s very hard to be in a country where you don’t speak the language and you go out and you don’t fully understand what next steps you need to take.”

Despite his gratitude for what the organization has done for him, Faida says he wishes he could have received more support from Save the Kids. “We were living in really bad conditions, and so I want to highlight that I’m really grateful that they were able to bring us here, because it did give us a bit of hope, even if I don’t fully know how [Save the Kids manages] their organization,” said Faida.

Faida is not the only member of the group to express frustration with the organization’s lack of transparency. Similar sentiment among other members inspired the collective to start their own organization, Comunidad Sin Fronteras (or Community Without Borders).

During the press conference, Adriana said, “We’re grateful to Save the Kids and we’re grateful to Eli and his family for their good intentions, but now we find ourselves in another situation, [which is] why we had to organize ourselves and form our own organization called Community Without Borders.”

Leidys is another member of the group who feels like more could have been done to support the collective’s needs. “I’m emotional because it’s such a difficult situation — because our kids are without studies, without the health resources that they need. We got here and they just forgot about us,” she explained to the Emerald through tears. “I have had information verified that other organizations have gone to other locations and offer that type of support.”

Leidys, like many others, feels taking her children back to the church to live in a tent is not an option. “It’s traumatizing to take the kids out of here and bring them back to that option,” she said. “We know that this organization did not receive funding — there is no more funding, and so we wonder who will support us? We have practically 48 hours to get out of here.”

Without assistance, she and 89 other families will have nowhere — not even the church — to go. “There are people who got here and were told that there was no space for them at the church,” said Leidys. “We have kids. We have people who are part of the LGBTQ community. We have single fathers and mothers and people who are together as a couple and have their families back home in Venezuela.”

The cost, according to those facing eviction, to keep one family in their hotel room is $1,800 per month, so to secure housing for another month to prevent the collective from being evicted, a payment of $162,000 (not including tax) must be made by Tuesday.

“We’re not asking for the government and for communities to put everything on a silver platter for us,” said Faida. “We’re simply asking for support as we continue our journey to try to better our quality of life and get security and stability.”

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📸 Featured Image: Refugee Venezuelan families seeking asylum are hoping to avoid being evicted from their Kent hotel within the next 48 hours. (Photo: Lauryn Bray)

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