As Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) boasts record-levels of arrests nationwide, and Seattle ICE watchers report a local uptick ahead of the election, the financial collapse of a Washington nonprofit dedicated to helping immigrants couldn’t be coming at a worse time.
Over the past few months, workers and management have traded barbs over the direction of the Washington Immigration Solidarity Network (WAISN). The drama has led to mass layoffs.
WAISN, an immigrant rights group that staffs deportation hotlines and connects immigrants to aid organizations around the state, laid off around half of its staff on Wednesday, and cut hours and benefits for others amid a “severe funding shortfall,” according to current and former workers.
This most recent round of layoffs came after WAISN refused to recognize the immigrant rights organizers and call center operator’s union, bringing this year’s layoffs to 18 people. More workers are being furloughed and have already lost significant benefits.
They accuse WAISN of firing workers either in retaliation for unionizing efforts or for criticizing management, as the organization enters an apparent financial freefall.
The news comes as human rights groups around the country are facing headwinds in the tireless work of reducing the harm of the Trump administration. Philanthropic funding has retreated, immigrants require increased assistance, and the effort of tracking ICE’s ever-shadier enforcement requires more volunteer and coordinator hours.
It’s in that pressure cooker that WAISN workers say their supposedly radical community-focused group has abandoned its principles by engaging in anti-union tactics. Workers say that mismanagement and fundraising failures are also to blame, not just the current political and philanthropic climate.
“WAISN is a champion for unions and works with unions, and so [workers] felt like it would be a very natural next step for WAISN to recognize its own union,” said Marsha Enriquez, a Finance and Operations Coordinator who was laid off on Wednesday
WAISN leadership acknowledged the layoffs in a statement, and said they will need to scale back services to immigrants, including reducing hours for its ICE reporting hotline. They blame philanthropic organizations and the state government for shrinking grants even while they deal with increased needs among immigrant communities. On her LinkedIn, co-director Catalina Velasquez says she helped grow WAISN from 5 employees to 37, and from a $2.4 million budget when she arrived in 2021 to a $6.7 million budget. After this year’s layoffs, the number of staff is at 14, including multiple executive assistants. By 2024, revenue had dropped around $3 million, according to the most recent available tax records.
The 14 workers laid off Wednesday organized immigrant communities around Washington state, including underserved rural communities around Yakima, according to the current and former unionizing workers in the WAISN Worker Collective. Organizers had been showing up in Rapid Response actions to help families affected by ICE. Hotline operators communicated reliable immigration and other resource information. They also collected reports of ICE activity, a sentinel that other immigration organizations around the state rely on to know if shit is really hitting the fan on a particular day.
Many of the laid off workers were members of the union organizing efforts.
“It was said that we were fired for economic reasons. But it’s important that you know that many of us who were fired were part of a group that raised our voice, a group that asked for changes from the executive board, and that questioned the executive direction of WAISN,” said one fired worker, Israel Gonzalez, in a Spanish-language video on the WAISN Worker Collective’s Instagram. He did not respond to a request for comment.
The Collective tried to obtain voluntary union recognition but leadership at the Yakima-based nonprofit, which partners with and receives funding from pro labor groups around Washington state, decided not to recognize them.
WAISN’s two well-paid co-directors, Brenda Rodríguez López and Catalina Velasquez declined an interview with The Stranger. But, through a DC-based spokesperson, they sent a statement that uses doublespeak that sounds an awful lot like “right to work”:
“WAISN respects and supports our employees’ right to decide for themselves whether they wish to be represented by a union. We are committed to ensuring that employees can make that decision freely. To respect that process, we will not comment further on the organizing effort at this time. Despite these changes, we remain focused on serving our mission and community,” reads WAISN’s emailed statement.
The organization will cut hours for the WAISN Deportation Defense Hotline from 12 hours a day to peak hours only, 7 a.m. through 2 p.m. That could make things even worse for callers in an immigration crisis seeking advice, or reporting local ICE activity. ICE watchers in touch with The Stranger by phone and online this week have said the call center is overwhelmed and often misses calls with ICE activity reports (there are some online self-help guides for those who can’t get through on the phone).
A current worker, who declined to give their name out of fear of retaliation, said Wednesday that the center got one hundred calls per day before the cutbacks. They said community members have complained for months that nobody picks up.
Enriquez, the former finance coordinator who was laid off on Wednesday, says the financial nosedive and its handling by executives is hurting immigrant communities at the worst possible time.
“ICE is having one of the biggest surges in Washington State, WAISN has not been there to support the communities that it says it’s going to serve,” she says.
WAISN continues to facilitate cash bonds for immigrants, which is funded in a separate account, the organization’s statement said. It will also continue to pair accompaniment volunteers with migrants who want a witness when they travel to sensitive locations, usually immigration court.
The DC WAISN spokesperson declined to answer specific questions about cost-cutting measures outside the layoffs and furloughs of frontline workers, including executive compensation.
“In my mind, the executive directors are the fundraising body of the organization,” Enriquez says.
Co-executive directors Rodríguez and Velasquez tout a structural commitment to feminist values of self care and sharing knowledge, according to union workers. In 2024 they each earned $160,000, according to a 2024 tax filing.
Some of those values extend to other workers in the form of mental health days, menstrual days, and other benefits. Until the current funding crisis, frontline organizers and call operators earned around $70,000, which most described as fair for nonprofit work, especially those who live outside of Seattle and have lower expenses.
That executive compensation has almost certainly increased in the past two years, according to Enriquez. With fundraising down, Enriquez expected the directors to share some of the burden with workers. “In my mind, the executive directors are the fundraising body of the organization,” Enriquez says Thursday. “They said that they would not be taking a pay cut.”
Menstrual days are still available for furloughed staff, but most who are working 20 hours per week, cannot access sick days and other benefits.
Enriquez said that she signed an NDA when she first joined WAISN that limits the financial details she can share. She said she declined another gag agreement Wednesday, allowing her to speak to the press at the cost of a severance package that included medical insurance.
After executives didn’t recognize the voluntary union recognition, the Collective filed a case with the National Labor Relations Board. In an updated filing, the union complaint covers a total of 18 workers who have been fired this year, including the 14 fired Wednesday. A lawyer representing the Collective in that complaint did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Update: Two hours after publication, a spokesperson request The Stranger change the language in our headline that said WAISN rejected the union. According to the spokesperson, WAISN learned about the request for union recognition and “the organization communicated with staff that it would follow up once leadership had a chance to give that request the attention and consideration it deserves. WAISN will share more information soon, but to respect staff, it cannot comment more at this time.”
The anti-union actions of WAISN’s executives could further erode their finances, which are more and more dependent on donations. For starters, the Collected has started a GoFundMe to help the laid off workers, indirectly competing for donations with WAISN.
But it gets worse.
Many of WAISN’s nonprofit support network, including many based in Seattle, are labor organizations like the Martin Luther King Jr. County Labor Council, which has provided some funding in the past. A spokesperson for MLK Labor did not immediately respond.
Workers in the Collective say directors have fumbled major partnerships over the past year, leading to reduced support and collaboration, like with the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP), which pulled back some support last year. That Seattle-based immigration legal support office has a proud union workforce. “NWIRP stepped down from WAISN’s Steering Committee in September of 2025, but we have continued to support WAISN’s work,” said NWIRP spokesperson Raul Alvarez in an email. That includes funding for the hotline and “know your rights” trainings, legal reviews of educational materials, and funding for the immigrant bond fund through early next year, “as long as required obligations are met,” Alvarez said.
Enriquez is ready to move on and find another job. She says WAISN’s board heard but did not agree with worker complaints, or take the suggestion to fire the executive directors. Going forward, she hopes they’ll try to restore trust with communities served by the organization.
“I really think that WAISN needs to hold a town hall of some sort with the executive directors present, with the board members present, where they are taking questions from volunteers who are doing the work and the labor for free, from community members who are volunteering their money and their time, from unions,” she says.
On Wednesday night, a Facebook livestream meant to inform immigrant families about how to prepare for possible detention was cancelled.
The digital organizer who helped run WAISN’s Facebook livestreams had been fired.
The original headline of this story has been updated.
More in NEWS
Local (and not-so-local) news from your favorite writers.
