FILE - A volunteer immigration advocate holds copies of "know your rights" flyers featuring a hotline number for reporting ICE arrests outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2025, in Portland, Ore.
Jenny Kane / AP
Layoffs at a statewide immigrant rights nonprofit raise questions about how the group will continue to run an ICE reporting hotline and other services that assist people facing deportation.
The Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network, or WAISN, terminated more than half of its staff in September, with most of the 18 cuts happening this week. A recently formed WAISN union claims supporters of the union were terminated in retaliation.
A spokesperson from WAISN’s leadership said the group has struggled to raise funds over the past year, a growing financial crisis that the organization had flagged in public messages earlier this year.
“The far-right has made the roadmap for this clear: intimidation and threats from the current administration have led funders who once saw themselves as allies to our movement to reassess political risk and pull back funding, leaving organizations like ours in incredibly challenging financial straits,” a WAISN spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement.
“Institutional philanthropy is not the only place where funding has shrunk. Immigrant and refugee-serving organizations and communities are also not receiving the same level of support from city, county, and state governments, which are facing immense pressure from the federal administration.”
The network operates as a statewide resource for immigrant and other community groups to reach out to when confronted with immigration enforcement issues. That includes documenting potential constitutional rights violations during an arrest on the street, accompanying immigrants to their immigration hearings, and other financial resources as a result of lost work or family members.
“We will be operating under limited capacity, but the core resources supporting Washington’s immigrant communities will remain,” a WAISN statement said.
The eliminated positions include administrative staff, rapid-response coordinators, and hotline operators.
The group is temporarily shortening its hotline operating hours to 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. but said it will remain open Monday to Friday, with interpretation available in 300 languages. WAISN said they’ll also continue to help people in detention pay bond and also respond to accompaniment requests, among other ongoing services.
The staff and funding cuts come at a time when immigration arrests across Washington and the country are facing new highs, with more calls coming into the hotline. Former employees report receiving a thousand calls a week.
Over the past year, tensions had also escalated within the organization, and parts of the community it served, according to Marsha Enriquez, WAISN’s former finance and operations coordinator.
“ The hotline shared multiple times that they were understaffed, that they were burnt out, that they did not have the mental capacity to take on every single call,” Enriquez said.
“The workload was increasing. We were trying to find solutions and suggestions for how to repair this distrust with the community and to try to listen to the community concerns.”
Enriquez said part of the distrust stemmed from community requests the organization couldn’t provide, like food assistance. There was also a call for WAISN to be more actively present in the community, she said.
WAISN has regularly provided workshops and resources for volunteer immigrant advocate groups, with much of the training happening online.
Amid the increase in work, Enriquez said leadership was pursuing priorities that were not reflected in the needs workers heard through the hotline. Workers wanted more scaled-down and grassroots community-facing events, legal clinics, and more hotline workers.
Everyone knew they were in financial trouble and were trying to find ways to adjust, Enriquez said. But executive staff, including Brenda Rodriguez and Catalina Velasquez, hadn’t taken pay cuts, Enriquez pointed out, and they kept three assistants working for them.
“We have a five-person team for the executive team, but we [had] three operators in the hotline for the whole state of Washington,” Enriquez said.
A spokesperson for the nonprofit said, “WAISN’s executive directors have both taken a 25% reduction in salary that has been in effect since Sept. 11, 2026.”
After four employees were laid off in early September, the workers decided to unionize.
“ We needed a voice at the table,” said Enriquez, who was also the union’s co-chair. “ We tried to follow the proper protocols. We asked for voluntary recognition. We shared our working conditions on our Instagram page in hopes of letting the community know what we were experiencing internally at WAISN, and why things needed to change, and why a union was so important.”
Enriquez said WAISN refused to recognize the union, and instead almost all the workers who backed the effort have been let go. As of Wednesday, 18 of the 32 staffers at WAISN are no longer at the nonprofit. A majority of them are unrecognized union workers or management who supported the effort.
Meanwhile, the terminated unionizing employees are fundraising as they decide what to do next. Other immigrant response groups are still trying to figure out how they’ll move forward as immigration arrests continue.
CORRECTION: This story was amended on Monday, Oct. 5, to more accurately reflect the relationship between layoffs and union members/backers. A response from the nonprofit’s executive directors was added about their pay reduction as of Sept. 11, 2026.
Gustavo Sagrero Álvarez is a reporter with KUOW.
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