Venezuelan migrants at Kent hotel have three more weeks of emergency shelter

Asylum seekers, mostly Venezuelan immigrants at Kent Quality Inn, will have three more weeks of emergency housing.

The roughly 200 people will be split up between different hotels in SeaTac, and will no longer stay at the Kent Quality Inn.

Adriana Figueira, one of the immigrants, is helping to advocate for the group and planning for the move.

“We’re working on sorting out the logistics of how transportation will work,” she said in Spanish. “We’re going to start with families.”

The city of Seattle is helping to fund the emergency housing, but that help can only last for a limited time, said Jaime Housen, the city's director of communications.

“We are closely following the Washington state legislative session, where Governor Inslee has proposed spending $8 million towards the issue,” Housen said.

Housen also said that city officials are looking to county, state, and federal partners to develop longer-term solutions, especially since they expect city resources for the emergency housing will soon run out.

Figueira and others expect to see legal clinics as well to help guide the immigrants through the application process to seek asylum.

All of this was a lot more of a precarious last week, when Figueira and her fellow immigrants were being asked to leave the hotel with no other place to go. With the help of grassroots groups, they spoke at a meeting of the Seattle City Council, shared details of their situation, and asked for help.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that the group of migrants were going to be moving into different hotels in Kent. This story has been updated to report the fact that these groups will be moving into different hotels in SeaTac.