Butterfly garlands, representing migration and created by community members, were bestowed on Bellingham City Hall in August 2022 during a call for City action to provide an Immigrant Resource Center.
The fate of the butterflies after the event was covered in the Salish Current article,
“Bringing the Butterflies Home”

March 30, 2025 Dena Jensen

I have so much gratitude for all the community efforts to call for actions from our government officials to bring home immigrants who were stolen from their Whatcom and Skagit County communities last week by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. We all need to keep speaking up until their families and friends are reunited with those who have been unjustly targeted. Here is a link to information on just some of the ways we can take action: https://www.foodjustice.org/blog/2025/3/27/update-on-farmworker-leader-alfredo-lelo-juarez

Experiencing the tragedy encompassed in past ICE raids in Bellingham, Whatcom County, and surrounding areas, while foreseeing raids to come, had fueled the sense of urgency and compassion that gave birth to Bellingham’s Immigration Advisory Board. The board began meeting in mid-2020, and their recommendation of an Immigrant Resource Center was one of their priorities throughout the duration of the board. The Center was envisioned to address the following urgent unmet community needs:

• Protecting Immigrant Rights
• Recognizing Immigrants as Community
  Members
• Equitable Access to Resources
• Civic Engagement
• Connecting Communities
• Stopping Racial Profiling
• Community Oversight of Law Enforcement and City Processes
• Restorative Justice Alternatives
• Immigration Services

After three and a half years of Immigration Advisory Board members’ efforts to help deliver the Immigrant Resource Center to their community members who had called for it, the Bellingham City Council voted to dissolve the IAB in the fall of 2024. Immediately after that point the resource center was no longer included in projects the City of Bellingham was pursuing.

Last week, Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez Zeferino, who served on the IAB for two years, was pulled from his car by ICE agents, detained briefly in a Ferndale ICE facility, and then taken to the Northwest ICE Processing Center, a private and inhumane detention center in Tacoma, WA. Lelo served on the IAB subcommittee that focused on the process to bring about the Immigrant Resource Center.

Here is the email I sent to local officials today related to all of this:

Sent: Sunday, March 30, 2025 at 05:20:29 PM PDT

Subject: Calling for actions to support critical needs for our immigrant friends and neighbors

Dear Bellingham City Council, Mayor Lund, Whatcom County Council, Executive Sidhu, and Whatcom Racial Equity Commission:

I am writing to call on all of you to take immediate action – working together and with community members – to help close the significant gap in local support for members of our immigrant community. The need for such action has been vital for years and is especially urgent during this time of escalating persecution of immigrants and other marginalized communities by our federal government.
 
Last year, the Immigration Advisory Board and one of their key recommended projects to promptly establish an Immigrant Resource Center were abandoned by the City of Bellingham. Since that time, the threat of ruthless mass deportations of immigrants that loomed before the 2024 presidential election, is swiftly starting to play out here in Whatcom County.
 
Last week, unknown numbers of our community members were apprehended by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  At least some of them have been locked up in Tacoma’s dangerous detention facility, including, Alfredo (Lelo) Juarez Zeferino, who had been serving on the Immigration Advisory Board at the point it was shut down by City of Bellingham officials.  With ICE and Homeland Security presence continuing to mix in with other official activities in our county in the days after, it feels like danger is all around and that the next round-up could be imminent. 

It’s easy to grieve the absence of the Immigrant Resource Center today and to call for your swift action to provide one.

In light of this, we can’t continue to use any current local government efforts to strengthen long-term resources for them – that will not be available or operational for years – as a reason to derail or fend off efforts to serve those who are in crisis today. This is true whether we are talking about our immigrant friends and neighbors, those without shelter, those who have been historically marginalized, or others who are in extreme peril due to their level of crisis. 

Besides the inhumanity of doing so, the choices we make that allow those people to be sacrificed now creates an excess of trauma for those who don’t happen to be caught in the crosshairs at the moment. As more and more of our friends and neighbors end up being deemed as enemies worthy of expulsion from our communities, potential long-term resources that are being currently prioritized can only serve those who are left somewhere down the line, and in such circumstances that those resources aren’t really of the value anticipated.

As I also call on you to use your influence with state and federal officials and other key parties to gain the release of those immigrants who have been needlessly stolen away from their friends and families here in our region, I will close this email with some relevant remarks made by Lelo Juarez at one of the last Immigration Advisory Board meetings that was allowed to be held:

“Well, thank you for coming, Hannah [Council Member Stone], and thanks for everybody for attending. I just wanted to say that it’s very important to respect everybody, and that also, very important to remember why we are here.

“Myself, I am here because I do believe that together we – that the City, the board, our community, we can create a place where our community, not just a specific group – like I say, I’m a farmworker, so I don’t just advocate for farmworkers – but everybody to have a place to ask for help, and also a place where they can say what they need to say. And that’s why I’m here. 

“And so the thing is, I don’t understand where this tension really is because I don’t really see this as us versus the City. And I really do understand that we’re an advisory board for the City. And the immigration advisory – the IRC, the Immigrant Resource Center is like a recommendation, something that our community asked us, and that’s what we’re trying to do.

“And that’s something I’ve been focusing on a lot because I really believe in it and I believe it’s something that we could do as a board because we’re working [indistinguishable]. 

“And so, when the city tells us there’s a – these steps to take to establish that, and it takes a really long time to do it, it’s almost like them just following this, and not really wanting to do it.

“But I think, when we come back to the retreat we did last year, we agreed to be honest with each other and I just don’t see that. I don’t see a lot of it, okay?

“And again, it’s not when you see us it’s us versus them.  Like, I believe we all should come together, and together we can do something, I wish – all create something that works for everybody. And so yeah, let’s all just do that.”

Sincerely,
Dena Jensen
Birch Bay, WA

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This email was sent to the following addresses:

To: Hollie Huthman <hahuthman@cob.org>; Jace A. Cotton <jacotton@cob.org>; ehwilliams@cob.org <ehwilliams@cob.org>; Hannah E. Stone <hestone@cob.org>; Michael W. Lilliquist <mlilliquist@cob.org>; Lisa A. Anderson <laanderson@cob.org>; Daniel C. Hammill <dchammill@cob.org>; ccmail@cob.org <ccmail@cob.org>; mayorsoffice@cob.org <mayorsoffice@cob.org>; Barry Buchanan <bbuchana@co.whatcom.wa.us>; Jon Scanlon <jscanlon@co.whatcom.wa.us>; Kaylee Galloway <kgallowa@co.whatcom.wa.us>; Todd Donovan <tdonovan@co.whatcom.wa.us>; Ben Elenbaas <belenbaa@co.whatcom.wa.us>; Tyler Byrd <tbyrd@co.whatcom.wa.us>; Mark Stremler <mstremle@co.whatcom.wa.us>; council@co.whatcom.wa.us <council@co.whatcom.wa.us>; Satpal Sidhu <ssidhu@co.whatcom.wa.us>; WREC <wrec@chuckanuthealthfoundation.org>

Cc: phab@co.whatcom.wa.us <phab@co.whatcom.wa.us>; IPRTaskForce <iprtaskforce@co.whatcom.wa.us>; Health <health@co.whatcom.wa.us>; cd@cob.org <cd@cob.org>