OLYMPIA, WA – Detained immigrant parents worried who will pick their children up from school. Mothers who’ve been deported with infants while their older kids are left behind in the U.S.
These are among the situations the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network is hearing about these days, according to Executive Director Catalina Velasquez. The immigrant rights group’s hotline is receiving a steady stream of calls.
“Nobody wants to have to think about making a plan for who will become a guardian to their children if they are deported, but it is, unfortunately, a grim reality that immigrant communities have to face,” Velasquez said in a statement.
“Our communities also have to navigate multiple complex systems and bureaucracies in order to make safety plans,” she continued.
A new Washington state task force aims to assess those systems. It was created a week after President Donald Trump reclaimed office and embarked upon a campaign of mass deportation.
In its first report, issued publicly this month, the task force found Washington faces multiple gaps in supports for separated immigrant families.
Since Gov. Bob Ferguson established the Family Separation Response Task Force in January, the federal government has taken increasingly brazen steps to detain immigrants, including U.S. citizens, to meet the White House’s goals.
“My administration will do everything we can possibly do to address those significant harms that are caused by those policies,” the Democratic governor said as he created the task force. “That’s making sure that kids who are torn away and separated from their parents have someone to care for them, and they have uninterrupted access to their education.”
The state similarly worked to improve its policies in this area during the first Trump administration.
The task force, housed in the state Department of Children, Youth and Families, includes representatives from about two dozen state agencies and partners with groups like Velasquez’s.
For years, Washington law has barred local police from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement. The state has created guidance on how school officials should comply with this.
For example, schools can’t reach out to immigration agents to share information about students. And schools are required to implement policy on what to do if deportation authorities show up on campus.
Advocates recommend families plan for the possibility that federal authorities could detain them.
Important steps include figuring out who will watch children if parents are detained or deported, ensuring the children have passports, and writing down any important medical information.
Resources and answers to frequently asked questions can be found at dcyf.wa.gov/EOTaskForce.
But the task force found such training is missing for extra-curricular activities, like parents supervising field trips and sporting events off campus. So the panel is working with the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction to develop such guidance.
The report also flagged a gap in cases when authorities detain one parent but not another. It is difficult for the remaining parent to receive sole guardianship of their child without evidence of abuse or neglect.
To find these missing pieces, the task force ran through a few scenarios. What would happen if a family is packing up groceries in a store parking lot and both parents are detained? Or if immigration officials raid a neighborhood and multiple children are left without any relatives to take care of them? Or if a raid at their workplace leaves children stuck in child care?
The Department of Children, Youth and Families only gets involved if U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement can’t find anyone to care for the children. Usually, parents identify a relative or neighbor to watch them.
It is “very rare” for a child separated from their deported parents to enter foster care, said DCYF spokesperson Kortney Scroger.
The task force’s final report is due in the winter.
This story first appeared on Washington State Standard.
