Our thoughts this week are with our friends and colleagues in Central and Eastern Washington who are dealing with horrible wildfires. Fifteen wildfires have burned more than 250,000 acres across the state. Tens of thousands of people have had to evacuate. The loss has been horrible, but neighbors are stepping up to help out.
For folks in the Spokane area, Range Media has a list of community resources which they’re regularly updating – and places to donate for those who want to help. You can find it here.
Additionally, the city of Spokane’s H.O.M.E. Starts Here Fund is supporting people impacted by wildfires locally. Fires are also burning on the Colville Reservation in North Central Washington. The Cedar Fund of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation is supporting direct assistance to people impacted by these fires.
Actions:
- Submit a comment to oppose raising the cost of naturalizing. Citizenship shouldn’t be a luxury good, but USCIS has proposed increasing the cost of filing for citizenship by 75%. There is still time to comment on this proposal and share why restricting immigration to the wealthiest people is a bad idea, but don’t delay. Comments are due by August 24th.
- Sign up for our community canvasses. We’re going door to door this year, talking to our neighbors about the issues that matter to them. Join us for one of our monthly canvasses in Clark, Yakima, or King Counties. Sign up today.
- Sign up for Constitutional Observer Training. Indivisible is training constitutional observers to help ensure people’s rights are respected during interactions with immigration enforcement agencies. These trainings prepare people to document and report what they witness. Trainings are on Tuesday nights and you can join from anywhere.
- Join us for our August Immigrant Rights Updates. We’ll be talking about the new public charge rule and how we can fight back against proposed federal regulation changes on August 26 from 5pm to 6pm. Register today.
Public Charge
When you apply for a green card, immigration officers look at your whole life: your family, your income, and your skills. They are also looking to see whether you’re likely to become primarily dependent on the government for assistance to meet your basic needs. Public charge, which originated in the US as a way to keep enslaved Black Americans from their freedom, has been included in US immigration law for over a century. It remains a way to stir up resentment for political gain in immigration policies.
Today, most often the federal government applies a test to determine whether an person might be a public charge when people apply for family-based or worked based permanent residency (also known as a green card).
Under the Biden Administration, this public charge test narrowed; benefits like SNAP or Medicaid weren’t held against green card applicants. However, on July 16. the Trump administration announced this would change. In a direct attack on lawful immigration, they largely rescinded the Biden-era public charge rule and finalized a new policy to start on September 18, 2026.
Currently the new rule doesn’t list what benefit programs immigration officers will or will not consider in public charge assessments in family-based or work-based green card applications. And in another change, they announced they can also look at family members’ use of benefits too.
This roll out seems designed to cause confusion and create hardships for immigrants and their families — even if the rule doesn’t apply to them. As we learned from the first Trump administration’ attempts to change public charge policy, these chilling effects mean that people will decide to disenroll from the public benefits for which they are eligible. A study from KFF estimates that this new policy combined with other attacks on immigrants could cause between 1.4 million to 4.1 million eligible people to disenroll from Medicaid or CHIP, including between 560,000 to 1.7 million U.S. citizen children. More people will go without medical care and more kids will go hungry.
To be clear: the public charge rule doesn’t apply to most people.
This rule change only applies in two scenarios: you are applying for a family-based green card or if you leave the US for more than six months.
This means if you are already a legal permanent resident renewing your green card or applying for citizenship, this change does not apply. If you’re applying for a green card based on your status as an asylee, refugee, or survivor of domestic violence or serious crimes (VAWA, T visa, U visa), or Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, public charge likely doesn’t apply. (The exception is if you are also applying for a green card through a family-based or work-based visa.) The law is complicated though, and everyone’s case is different. If you or someone you know is considering applying for legal permanent residency and has questions about the new public charge rule, consult a lawyer.
This rule also is not in effect yet. It won’t take effect until September 18, and it does not apply to people who apply for green cards before that date.
You can find more information on the Protecting Immigrant Families website and this fact sheet Public Charge: Does this Apply to Me?.
Soft Raids & Aggressive Tactics
In Whatcom County, ICE has been conducting immigration raids around a seafood packing plant, rather than inside it. Workers are being targeted as they are driving to work, parking their vehicles, or arriving home. Some were reportedly lured to a van offering free water before agents emerged. Over 50 employees at Premier Packing have been arrested by ICE since May.
These “soft raids” are a different tactic for ICE. They’re still targeting one employer, but the arrests are dispersed. They’re a way to get around Washington’s new state law requiring employers to give workers five days’ notice before planned I-9 inspections.
ICE has been using increasingly shameless and aggressive tactics as they try to meet their new standard of 2,000 arrests per day. The Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network has reported an increase of 45% in confirmed immigration enforcement actions across the state. In Shelton, Washington, ICE detained at least 21 people over the course of one day in locations across town in late June. ICE also arrested a man near Seattle Center, cleaning up after the mass shooting earlier this month. And last week, Senator Patty Murray joined in calls to release Eduardo Aguirre Esparza, a West Seattle man named who was arrested at the end of July. Aguirre Esparza has lived in the United States for over 20 years, is married to a U.S. citizen, has a pending green card application. He was speedily transferred out of Washington state, and is currently at an ICE detention facility in Texas.
But groups of neighbors are mobilizing too. In north Seattle’s Maple Leaf neighborhood, neighbors recently saw two people being detained by ICE and jumped into action. They raised a warning, recorded the arrests made by masked ICE agents and connected with WAISN’s deportation defense hotline. There actions could save these people from deportation.
Indivisible is offering Constitutional observer trainings weekly. These are trainings about how to document immigration arrests and report them so that people’s rights are being respected. They’re being held weekly on Zoom, so anyone across Washington can attend. Sign up here to attend.
Supreme Court Amicus Brief for Mail in Voting
Earlier this week OneAmerica joined the Asian Law Caucus and 23 other immigrant and civil rights organizations in submitting an amicus brief to the US Supreme Court, urging them to block Trump’s executive order on mail-in voting.
Back in March, the president issued an executive order which would essentially require the US postal service to determine who could vote by mail. Here’s how the Seattle Times described the potential impact of this order earlier this summer:
“Imagine this: The U.S. Postal Service sending lists to states saying who is allowed to vote. Prosecutions of local elected officials who don’t follow new federal voting procedures. The end of Washington state’s longstanding practice of counting ballots received after Election Day.”
This rule would require states to send the USPS lists of all registered voters who request mail-in and absentee ballots. If the post office determines that any voter on the list isn’t eligible, USPS would refuse to accept and deliver the ballot. Additionally, if any state doesn’t send in its voting list, the post office could refuse to send its ballots.
This executive order and the accompanying Postal Service rule are attacks on our democracy – and another illegal attempt to control the results of our elections.
Dozens of you submitted comments earlier this summer to oppose this rule change already. These comments matter because they are part of the public record. And now, a number of states – including Washington – and other interested parties filed lawsuits to stop this executive order. It’s currently making its way to the Supreme Court.
Amicus briefs are legal documents which provide the perspective of an individual or organization on a legal case that is being heard by a court. We joined this one not only because it’s an attack on Washington’s free and fair elections, but also because this executive order will uniquely impact naturalized voters, limited English proficient voters, and their family members.
The State Citizenship lists which the Department of Homeland Security would compile rely on incomplete datasets, which have misclassified naturalized citizens and non-citizens in the past. The Social Security Administration – which is one source of data for proposed voting lists – normally record someone’s citizenship status or residence when they apply for a Social Security number. These records aren’t automatically updated when someone naturalizes.
Furthermore, limiting voting by mail will disproportionately impact naturalized citizens and communities of color. 35% of naturalized citizens cast their ballots by mail in November 2024, which is greater than the general population. Fully 47% of Asian American voters and 34% of Latino votes mailed their ballots back in the 2024 election nationwide.
Voting by mail also allows people with limited English proficiency more time to understand what is on their ballot or obtain help in voting. The Asian Law Caucus surveyed California voters who listed a preference for Spanish or Chinese. They found that language accessibility with the third most common reason people chose to vote by mail; voting by mail allowed people time to read the ballot and get translation help.
This case is racing forward, and could impact our elections this fall. More to come.
In The News:
Trump Attacks Birthright Citizenship Again
“The Supreme Court already decided this issue: Birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the Constitution. No additional executive order can change the meaning of the Constitution.” (NBC News)
President Trump took aim at limiting birthright citizenship, again. After failing at the Supreme Court earlier this summer, he signed two executive orders yesterday attacking this core American principle. Both executive orders will likely face legal challenges.
ACLU’s Lawsuit
“They put her right back in the cell in the same conditions, and less than a week later she’d passed out again and had to be transported to the emergency room again.” (KUOW)
The ACLU of Washington sued US Customs and Border Protection this past week behalf of a family of six asylum seekers. They were held together in a windowless cell for four weeks last year and denied medical care. This is part of a national legal campaign targeting CBP for mistreating immigrants.
Caregiving
“Like many others, I am not demanding special treatment… I just want the opportunity to keep working.” (New York Times gift link)
Millions of immigrants work as caregivers for older Americans. With the Trump administration ending TPS protections, delaying DACA renewals, and generally cracking down on immigration, elder care is spiraling toward a crisis in the US.
Small Acts of Resistance
“By me picking up the car and storing it here for a little bit and making the video to let people know, ‘Hey, come pick up your car,’ I hope I’m doing a good thing. That’s the only thing I know that I can do.” (KUOW)
ICE is increasingly arresting people during traffic stops, which means people have to figure out what to do with their cars. Impound lots rack up fees that families can’t pay. However, when Angel Tepale, a mechanic in South King County, gets a call from someone detained by ICE, he tows their car for free as a small act of solidarity.
Detention Facilities
“[On] July 10, ICE published draft contract terms for 5,500 detention beds in four regions of the country—including language declaring that state and local laws “shall not apply” to the facilities’ operations.” (Wired)
After a US District judge ruled that GEO Group had to left state health inspectors into the Northwest Immigrant Processing Center in Tacoma. Now, ICE has moved to place its detention centers outside of the reach of state laws.
Head Start
“This proposal would weaken those protections for hundreds of thousands of children and undermine what has made Head Start one of America’s most successful early childhood programs.”
Yesterday, the US Department of Health and Human Services announced it would propose rule that would severely weaken the Head Start, which provides early learning to hundreds of thousands of children. The program’s performance standards are the foundation of Head Start’s high-quality programs. We’ll send out more on this proposal in the coming weeks, as public comment opens.
Finally, a new publication written by and for people who have been impacted by immigration detention is launch. IMMPrint is prioritizing submissions from authors who are currently detained, and contributors will be paid for their work. Check out their submission form here, and see more on Instagram.
That’s all for this month. Stay safe and have a good weekend!