asylum seekers

Washington officials are working to distribute around $32 million in state funding this year to aid asylum-seekers, as hundreds of migrants live in tents in the Seattle area.

A cluster of tents in a grassy lot in Kent highlights the issues that many communities face as President Joe Biden attempts to restrict migrants seeking asylum.

The asylum-seekers, mainly from Angola, Congo and Venezuela, have set up an encampment in a Seattle suburb near an empty motel.

Most of the funding will go to the state Office of Refugee and Immigrant Assistance for services that include housing and legal assistance, food, and transportation.

A Seattle City Council meeting on Tuesday grew contentious when asylum seekers marched there to plead for help with housing. Local activists joined them and demanded that the money come from funding the city has already allocated for police surveillance.

Earlier this month, asylum seekers, most of them from Venezuela, marched to Seattle City Hall and pleaded for shelter. Now they’ve been moved into a new space.

Activists with the group La Resistencia say there’s been a hunger strike at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Tacoma for nearly a month.

Providing care to asylum seekers has been a challenge, not least due to language barriers. Two entrepreneurs have turned shipping containers into mobile clinics, with 24-hour access to translators.

Despite U.S. efforts to stanch the flow, numbers are approaching the crisis of two years ago. U.S. Border Patrol agents say it's diverting resources away from catching drug and human traffickers.

The settlement of a class-action lawsuit, filed on behalf of asylum seekers, should make it easier for people to work in the U.S. while for their asylum…