Faith Leaders Stand Up For Federal Way Immigrant Community

by

Advocating Justice

The Kent Reporter | Friday, August 1, 2025 10:06am ❙ NORTHWEST

When “Esperanza” turned 16, she did what many Federal Way teenagers do and told her parents she wanted to get a job.

To her surprise, they told her that would be impossible.

Esperanza’s parents were not being controlling. Instead, they shared information they had protected her from until she was old enough to understand:

Esperanza was not a citizen. She had been brought into the United States from Mexico when she was just 6 months old.

“I felt confused, I wouldn’t say angry. I understood why they did it, but I just felt like, helpless, hopeless, like, there was nothing I could do and I just had to deal with it,” Esperanza told the Federal Way Mirror newspaper. She asked that her real name not be used out of fear for her safety.

Now at age 30, she still lives in Federal Way. Like other immigrants with a complicated legal status in the U.S., a frustration with an unfair system has turned to fear in the wake of an immigration crackdown by the Trump administration that has caused some global human rights watch groups to sound the alarm.

“To be on alert at all times…I haven’t gotten pulled over in years, but I’m scared to, if I ever do. And [my wife] is scared for me. She panics every time I don’t text her when I get where I’m at because of everything going on,” Esperanza said.

Heightened presence of ICE in the community has just increased that fear Esperanza and her wife.

“She got off the freeway exit where we live last week and she saw ICE right there,” Esperanza said.

Faith leaders stand up

They are not the only Federal Way family to experiencing this fear under the current federal administration’s immigration crackdown. Several faith leaders from Federal Way are among those standing up to protest the lack of due process and conditions in detention centers.

On July 5, Rev. Karen Yokota-Love was one of those faith leaders who joined a demonstration led by local human rights group La Resistencia at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma.

She lives in Federal Way, but leads the congregation at Blaine Memorial Methodist Seattle. Her faith and family history brought her to the Saturday demonstration.

“I’m a granddaughter of immigrant parents. They’re Japanese American…my family was incarcerated during World War II,” Yokota-Love said.

She described what her family went through as the “same kind of thing” because they were taken away from their homes and detained with no rights.

“It didn’t matter if we had birthright citizenship. Everything is parallel,” Yokota-Love said.

Local survivors of Executive Order 9066 in 1942 describe their detainment conditions as a concentration camp and hold remembrance events each year to make sure something similar never happens again.

As a leader in a faith community, Yokota-Love said “it is so important that we are raising up our voices during this time,” especially at a time when many of those pushing for harsh immigration policies are also pushing Christian nationalism.

Yokota-Love and her congregation are a contrast to the Christian nationalist viewpoint, she said, adding that “not all of us believe like that or think like that,” and instead, “we’re trying to do what Jesus really advocated for… to be in solidarity and advocate for the marginalized, the sick, the lonely.”

To live out that message in action, her church partners with groups like Tsuru for Solidarity, whose mission is in part to “educate, advocate, and protest to close all U.S. concentration camps.”

The Rev. Karen Yokota-Love and her congregation are a contrast to the Christian nationalist viewpoint, she said, adding that “not all of us believe like that or think like that,” and instead, “we’re trying to do what Jesus really advocated for… to be in solidarity and advocate for the marginalized, the sick, the lonely.”

The solidarity demonstration she attended was in support of those who are detained at the Tacoma detention facility. Like many immigration detention facilities across the country, this one has been criticized for inhumane conditions for years by groups like La Resistencia.

Research by the University of Washington has looked into abuses including sanitation issues around food and laundry, allegations of medical neglect, inappropriate use of solitary confinement, reporting of sexual assault and abuse, use of force and chemical agents, patterns of neglect by local law enforcement for reports of assaults and abuse at the facility, and more.

These conditions have worsened since the Trump Administration ramped up detention and deportation pressures, La Resistencia director Rufina Reyes told the Mirror.

La Resistencia communicates with detainees in order to get firsthand reports on conditions.

Reyes told the Mirror through an interpreter that detainees are reporting that overcrowding has intensified the abuses they’ve been protesting for years.

The detention center is owned by the GEO Group, a private corporation that reported record profits this year, including a net income of $19.6 million in the first quarter of 2025, from their private prisons and detention facilities.

The Seattle Times reported on July 17 that the conditions at the detention center are in violation of the GEO Group’s contract with ICE, but that no sanctions have been put in place in response.

Washington state also ruled that that GEO’s practice of paying workers only $1 a day for work performed inside the facility violated state labor laws. GEO attempted to fight the ruling in court, but lost, and rather than increasing the pay of detainees, they have opted to no longer employ detainees for any of the internal labor of the facility.

Neither ICE nor the GEO Group responded to requests for comment for this story.

Reyes described how it is often the main income earner who gets detained and families “end up with a bad economic situation, they also end up with no money to pay a lawyer, to survive, to eat, or to pay the rent.”

The impact on families in Federal Way and throughout the state and the country is exponential, Reyes told the Mirror.

“It is a trauma that is experienced as a family member of yours being detained. It is not just one person, it is the whole family. The psychological damage that families suffer is terrible, the fear with which they are living at this time is tremendous,” Reyes said.

Several emergency vehicles entered the Tacoma Northwest Detention Center during the July 5 demonstration, which La Resistencia representatives said is a common occurrence stemming from issues with healthcare access for detainees that has been documented by the University of Washington. Photo by Keelin Everly-Lang / the Mirror

People in detention

In addition to the issues around human rights, concerns are also being raised about the contrast between the administration’s promises to focus on detaining and deporting dangerous criminals and the actual data that shows that many of those who have been detained or deported have no criminal record at all.

At the Tacoma Detention Center, ICE records as of June 2025 indicate that 835 individuals have no ICE threat level, and a total of 217 individuals are detained with a threat level of 1, 2 or 3.

Many immigrants who are being detained in South King County and beyond have some form of documentation, were already in some sort of immigration process, or were participating in a program called Alternatives to Detention Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ATD-ISAP), Reyes told the Mirror.

ATD-ISAP is a digital surveillance program that has been used since 2004. It “utilizes case management and technology tools to support aliens’ compliance with release conditions while on ICE’s non-detained docket. ATD-ISAP also increases court appearance rates,” according to their website.

While it has also received criticism, the program has been successful in terms of rates of court appearances and providing an alternative to physical incarceration for those working through immigration procedures.

From ICE data in 2025 through May, they reportedthat out of 61,567 scheduled court appearances for those in these programs, 98.5% were attended.

In the Seattle area alone, as of June 14, 2025, there were 10,332 under digital surveillance, according to ICE data.

Detaining someone in a facility like the detention center in Tacoma is also paid for by taxpayers.

According to ICE’s own Alternatives to Detention program, the daily cost per ATD-ISAP participant is less than $4.20 per day, versus the average cost of detention, which they report as $152 per person per day.

Those in these programs often have required check- ins. Since the new administration took over, many people in Washington are “being summoned before their regular appointment arrives and there they are being arrested,” Reyes told the Mirror. In addition, “independent of the people who are going to appointments, they are also being detained in their homes or on the street,” Reyes said.

DACA in Federal Way

While Esperanza is not part of ATD-ISAP, she is part of another program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).

Both DACA and ATD-ISAP are examples of just how misleading terms like “undocumented” and “illegal” can be.

Through DACA, Esperanza has had a work permit and Social Security number since high school. She pays taxes. She’s spent her career helping survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking and working to support at-risk youth in public schools.

Almost 11 years and $17,000 later, she still is not technically a legal resident, although today she is only one interview away from her green card after getting married in 2020.

“DACA was supposed to be the pathway [to citizenship],” Esperanza said. “It wasn’t.”

Esperanza and her wife were at first scheduled to have that last interview standing in the way of her green card on July 25. After finding out that her lawyer was out of town, Esperanza and her wife worried about attending the appointment without his protection and requested to reschedule it.

On July 24, Esperanza told the Mirror she hasn’t heard any updates about a new date yet. Although her status should protect her from deportation and/or detainment as long as she does not violate any laws, indiscriminate actions by ICE agents and waning support of DACA by the current administration have ripped away even that shaky safety net.

Financial barriers

At the July 5 demonstration, community members showed a different vision of what immigration could look like in the United States.

However, finding support and community at demonstrations like this one is not an option for Esperanza and others in her situation right now.

Growing up, she would attend peaceful protests with her parents to advocate for immigration rights and reform, “but now we have to think about whatever we do online, in person, if we’re photographed, if it’s brought back up, like, how is that going to look on us?” she said.

For her wife, “it’s weird for her to be in this situation where she feels like she should do something, but is scared to do so,” Esperanza said. “I’m also scared to do so.”

Like many other immigrants, she is looking for a straightforward pathway to citizenship — for the opportunity to be considered full community members in the country they already contribute to and call home.

Like many of those who are currently detained, Esperanza told the Mirror that if she could ask people to understand one thing, it’s that “they tell you to just ‘do it the right way’ but it is not that easy. There is no right way. It’s hard and expensive.”

In her situation, even after getting married, they had tried to start the citizenship process three different times after saving up the money to do so. As soon as they started thinking they were in a good position, “we get hit by a drunk driver…he hits us in our brand-new car that we’ve only had for three months. Completely totals it and tries to run away.”

The couple had to use their savings to get them through the recovery process.

“We have a life. We have bills. We can’t just put that on hold,” Esperanza said.

The next summer, “my mom had a stroke, so it was all hands on deck to try to help them pay their hospital bills.” Fast forward another year, and Esperanza almost died after an unavoidable illness landed her back in the hospital.

After the 2024 election, she realized that despite being out of savings once again, her safety would be at risk with the new administration, and she had to take out a loan to start the process of applying for her green card.

“I was kind of forced into it with everything else going on. I didn’t feel comfortable and confident doing it, but I didn’t have a choice,” Esperanza said.

Despite the awkwardness and embarrassment she’s felt while having to ask for this help during the process, she said she’s grateful to her wife, supervisors and others who have been “completely 100% supportive” with doing everything from writing letters of recommendation to refusing to leave her side during a trip to Mexico and back to secure a legal entry date.

At the July 5 demonstration, many shared that stories like Esperanza’s are the reason they feel they have to speak up — because those that are most affected have the least freedom to advocate for change.

Rev. Katie Klosterman, who leads the congregation at Browns Point United Methodist, said “watching siblings of color be targeted…it is wrong and immoral to treat someone who is made in the image of God like this.”

“As a person of faith, Jesus calls me to love my neighbor,” Klosterman said, “especially those who are vulnerable and oppressed.”

This article is republished with permission from the Kent Reporter, a regional edition of the Federal Way (Wash.) Mirror.