The refugee agency Thrive Spokane is celebrating three years of helping people from other nations assimilate here.
Thrive began by helping people who fled the war in Ukraine. But it has helped people from more than a dozen nations, some of whom were present Friday at a celebration at the agency’s downtown hotel near Interstate 90. It was a back-to-school event for immigration and refugee families. Thrive supporters handed out shoes and other supplies. At a table in the shade, people sifted through backpacks and clothes. Children took turns touring a city fire engine.
Thrive executive director Mark Finney remembered the wave of Ukrainian refugees who came in 2022.
Mark Finney: “We opened this hotel, and in a period of a month, we ended up moving in about 80 families just right away because there was a huge need. So for the first couple of years, we had a steady stream, lots of Ukrainians coming to Spokane. But with the new administration, all refugees have been stopped, including all Ukrainians, and so we don't have this steady stream of folks coming from that community. So what we've seen is that there are a lot of other folks, and they come and everybody's got a little different story and a little different journey. But as you can see today, we have a lot of different cultures here.”
Finney estimates people from as many as 15 nations are currently living in Thrive’s hotel.
He says, three years ago, people were eager to come here and become part of the community. Since the beginning of the Trump administration, he says, people have become more hesitant to seek help.
MF: Predominantly, we just work with folks who have come here through some sort of legal channel. But folks with papers, legal status, visas are all pretty scared by the tactics that are being used. And one of the things we're trying to do is to just reclaim the public spaces and say, look, ICE can't take you away if you've got a legal status, if you've got a green card or a visa or a humanitarian parole stamp in your passport. You should be able to enjoy the community just like everybody else. So that's why we're doing things like this today. We want to make sure folks know that this community is still a safe place, that even if you're hearing scary things on the news media or from national figures, the local community still embraces you. And we want to make sure that you have a great time and a great life here.
Doug Nadvornick: Has ICE come knocking on your door?
MF: They have not.
DN: Have you thought about what you would do if that happened?
MF: Yeah, I mean, we definitely think about all the scenarios, and that's a piece of, you know, a part of what we do is we really try to make sure we teach people about their safety and their rights, but also to make sure that we have a really secure facility. So this is private property. Neither ICE nor any other law enforcement can be here without a warrant. Our staff know that. Our residents know that. We do have, you know, a secure access on the doors, and that's primarily to keep people safe for all kinds of reasons. But everybody who lives here has their own access code, and if you don't live here, you can't get in the building. You know, we do cooperate. We have great partnerships with our local law enforcement. They've been super good to work with. And we're always looking to make sure that folks know the rules and follow the rules, but we also are not interested in being intimidated by hostile federal story lines.
DN: So in terms of assimilating folks like this into the community, where does Spokane need to get better?
MF: Yeah, so one of the ways that Spokane is great is there's a really good collaborative spirit. And so we work with a lot of different nonprofits in town, but also a lot of public agencies. You know, the city has been great to work with, the public school districts, fire department, police. So I think there's a great sense of collaboration here. One of the challenges is that as a city that hasn't had as many immigrants from global places for a long time, there's some language and cultural access and understanding issues we still need to work on. Most people don't know there's more than 70 languages spoken by kids in our public schools. But that's a reality, and some of our institutions and some of our understanding has a ways to go to catch up with that.
DN: In terms of nationalities, are you seeing a new wave of folks from different countries coming in? What's the newest and hottest, so to speak?
MF: We're seeing people really from our own community who've been here but could use a little bit more help. We're also seeing some folks come from other parts of the country who maybe don't feel safe in Florida right now because their governor and their government is super antagonistic towards immigrants of all kinds, whether you have papers or not. We've had a couple families that have showed up and said, hey, I've been working in Florida, I got my documents, everything's fine, but I don't feel safe there because of this Alligator Alcatraz stuff, and, you know, I don't want my kids to be harassed at school. So I want to come to a place that's safe, and I want to work a job where I know I'll be respected. So that's not really a specific ethnicity or culture. Today we have people from lots of places. You know, there's some Iraqis and Afghans here and some Syrians. We've also got some Haitian folks and some Sudanese people and I think some folks from the Congo. Definitely also a great contingent of Ukrainians who are still part of our programs. So we recently had a couple families from Eritrea. So we've got quite a few different folks from a lot of different places.
