Local Parish Forming Immigrant Assistance Effort

St. Leo’s Catholic Parish in Tacoma is exploring ways to assist our immigrant community. Specifically, they intend to assist individuals and families directly impacted by ICE/federal immigration court. Their intent is to partner with church, religious, and community groups to establish a network of pre-established work groups who have some training and basic helping skills to assist families in crisis.

This is a work-in-progress for the organizers, and they are organizing and building a network structure with each meeting.  How the project evolves depends on the capacity of church partners and the needs of the immigrant community. Organizers hope to build a community to better serve, understand and be a witness for our immigrant neighbors. 

Each community-based group would have a coordinator to direct pre-identified volunteers to assist an individual or family in urgent need. This may be assisting with a ride to the airport following a release from the Tacoma immigrant detention center, assistance with groceries when the family breadwinner is detained, or providing rides to school or medical appointments when a caregiver is not available. The scope of assistance is varied and the term “accompaniment” is now used to describe the holistic service provided to immigrants: tangible help, solidarity with tender care and witnessing injustice.

There is also an opportunity for volunteers to provide support in advance of any possible encounter with ICE/federal court such as helping with completing safety planning tools, “privacy waiver” forms (to facilitate locating a detained person) and temporary custody forms for children to be cared for by local family/neighbors when a parent is detained.

“Accompaniment” training from various agencies will provide basic education about ways to respect the privacy and dignity of the helping relationship to more advanced roles such as “federal court accompaniment”, hosting overnight guests between the day of federal detention release and scheduled transportation back to their out-of-state home. 

To learn more about being a part of this emerging immigrant accompaniment effort, contact John Landy at jjlandy43@gmail.com.