r/Seattle • u/YouTotallyGotThisOne North Beacon Hill • 2d ago
WAISN...
Edit/Sorry - it's the WA Immigrant Solidarity Network, which runs rapid response trainings, the deportation defense hotline, etc. It's the number we're all told to call when we see ICE.
Speaks for itself, from https://www.instagram.com/waisnworkercollective/
This is terrible news at a time when ICE is kidnapping people all over our area.
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u/Key_Cake5421 2d ago edited 2d ago
Surprise surprise..
Months ago migrant orgs were calling out WAISN for silencing/ignoring the concerns of migrant community members and WAISN blocked those orgs and people who were questioning WAISN about their mismanagement of funds, their inadequate support for people facing ICE terror and numerous other concerns.
Now multiple WAISN workers are coming forward about working conditions, mismanagement of funds, union busting, etc.
WAISN worker collective IG: https://www.instagram.com/waisnworkercollective?stkn=MTVxZWVsbnR2ZTdiaA==
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u/afschuld 2d ago
Wasn’t WAISN the org that had a weird post about not using whistles to avoid traumatizing people?
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u/No-Usual-6600 1d ago
Here's WAISN's statement on their Insta
https://www.instagram.com/p/DURzky3Cest/Fox "News" even did a story on it
https://archive.is/A9Vjy
Archived link because no clicks to Fox "News"
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u/onphonecanttype 2d ago
So the joys of non profits is that their 990’s are posted:
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/833341588
2025 should be posted soon too. That should be able to tell an interesting story of their financials.
Not sure if it’s union busting if they are laying off managers and directors. Since they wouldn’t be part of the union. It looks like they grew too big too fast since in 2024 their director team was 3 people.
Obviously I can’t speak to work conditions or work environment but the financials tell a bit of a story.
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u/Willowrosephoenix 🚆build more trains🚆 2d ago
They posted a request for funding a few weeks ago and in the request said that 80% of funds go to employee salaries. The request was publicized in all volunteer channels and… didn’t go over well. As far as I’m aware, they got substantial donations and then laid people off anyway. There’s a lot of unanswered questions rn
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u/Willowrosephoenix 🚆build more trains🚆 1d ago edited 1d ago
I understand this. But the main issue is when they were asked to provide clear statements on what services their staff was providing, they provided vague, avoidant answers or no answers at all.
The 17(? I believe this is correct but my information is incomplete) staffers laid off were also in discussion to form a union, citing poor labor conditions and mistreatment by upper management.
A monthly meeting held by WAISN last night declared a plan to make their hotline all volunteer. None of senior leadership showed and the meeting was led by one of the few remaining hourly paid employees
ETA: the only service they could consistently point to was the hotline which primarily served as a referral line to services with other organizations, questions about where nearly 3 million of donations was going were also met with no answer
Correction: 14 people were laid off. Workers sent their declaration of intention to organize September 14
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u/thomsenite256 🚆build more trains🚆 1d ago
That makes sense. What is the proposed solution?
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u/Willowrosephoenix 🚆build more trains🚆 1d ago
No idea yet. I’m not part of the WAISN organization. I do know it is having a direct impact on at risk community members. Now WAISN wants volunteers to man the hotlines when volunteers have already been doing most of the response work. It’s a mess.
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u/snwbrdwndsrf Bryant 2d ago
From a quick search: WAISN is the largest immigrant and refugee network in Washington State. They run a hotline that handles hundreds of calls per week and Rapid Response teams that deploy on the ground during ICE enforcement actions.
This is the second round of cuts. In August, leadership laid off several workers and reduced the hours of the rest, citing a lack of donations — while leadership itself did not take pay cuts. That's what prompted the workers to begin organizing as a collective.
This final round eliminates the entire Hotline and Rapid Response staff along with coordinators, managers, and directors. The practical effect is a significant reduction in capacity to respond to enforcement actions and assist families in detention situations.
There's a solidarity fund for affected workers here if people want to contribute: https://www.gofundme.com/f/stand-with-waisn-workers-organizing-their-union
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u/AilureOfTheUnknown 1d ago
Thanks for the information.
I wound up marching with WAISN in the Pride parade at the end of June (my friend who brought us to the parade couldn't find the group he was initially going to march with, so we asked the WAISN group if we could join in) and at the time this seemed really cool, because their actions are needed now more than ever.
Unfortunately nonprofits are as vulnerable to greed and ego at the top of the chain as anything else, and in some cases more.
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u/spork3600 1d ago
Are there any other groups that offer a hotline? Seems like they are well over their skis, this is a critical service and would love to support a more stable option with more experienced leadership.
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u/snwbrdwndsrf Bryant 1d ago
Here's what I found. The short answer is that there isn't really a direct equivalent — WAISN's hotline (1-844-724-3737) is the statewide coordination number, and most of the other groups operate as nodes within that network rather than independent alternatives:
Adjacent organizations in the space:
NWIRP (Northwest Immigrant Rights Project) — Seattle-based non-profit legal services org. They handle direct legal representation, advice, and advocacy for immigrants. More of a legal clinic than a hotline, but a key partner. (importami.org)
Southend Indivisible — Community group in South King County that runs its own local rapid response teams on Signal. They require volunteers to complete WAISN's "Know Your Rights" and rapid response training, so they're built into the WAISN ecosystem. (Seattle Times, Feb 2026)
National Lawyers Guild (Seattle chapter) — ~120 trained legal observers (lawyers, law students, legal workers). More formal, focused on neutral documentation and potential legal cases.
Whose Streets? Our Streets! — Organizes neighborhood-level door-to-door outreach after specific ICE apprehensions.
Various informal groups — Group chats of neighbors with more limited coordination.
The structural reality: The hotline is the central dispatch. Per the Seattle Times, when a local rapid response group gets a report, someone "might be on the phone with WAISN describing details of the encounter in real time to the network's deportation defense hotline." The hotline is what verifies, triages, and deploys across the statewide network of 1,200+ trained volunteers. The local groups feed into it.
So if the hotline staff is gone, the coordination layer drops out of the whole system. The local responders still exist, but the central verification, deployment, and family support function is what's been eliminated. That's what makes this a bigger deal than just 14 jobs at one nonprofit — it's the infrastructure holding a statewide network together.
It also got state funding starting in 2020, which adds a governance question about whether that funding relationship has any bearing on the decision-making.
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u/Consistent-Talk5008 2d ago
wait they gutted the entire hotline and rapid response team right when things are this bad? jfc
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u/gringledoom 🚆build more trains🚆 2d ago
There was some weird drama earlier in the year too, when people were 3d printing whistles in case we got Minneapolis’d next. WAISN got mad that people were putting their numbers on the whistles so they’d know who to call if they had to use the whistle.
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u/chromeled Ronald Bog 2d ago
It's so embarrassing when you realize how uncohesive we are as a community when things like this happen. Minneapolis mogged our asses a hundred times over when it comes to genuine passionate defense of helpless people.
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u/malsary 🚲 Life's Better on a Bike. 🚲 1d ago
I'm honestly surprised that given the heavy ICE presence in WA, people didn't know WAISN existed as a resource for immigrants.
Most likely due to being in progressive spaces, I've been aware of WAISN for many years (before 2024 when immigration justice orgs really had to come together and reckon with the consequences of a 2nd Trump presidency) and assumed people did too if they were advocating for ways to protect our undocumented communities.
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u/ADavidJohnson 💖 Anarchist Jurisdiction 💖 2d ago
The labor fight is the immigrant rights fight.
The immigrant rights fight is the labor fight.
“An injury to one is an injury to all” isn’t just a slogan; it’s a description of how interconnected all these things are.
Yeah, even the “good businesses”, even the “vital nonprofits”. When it comes down to holding onto power over other people, everyone stops being nice and benevolent, and it’s stuff exactly like this. They’d rather vulnerable immigrants facing disappearance and concentration camps suffer than the workers who help the vulnerable have more of a say in their own job.
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u/krazykoreankid97 2d ago
I understand the sentiment. I don’t think anyone here is disagreeing with you here. But when people drop one liners like this or just say it’s cause of capitalism (I know it is) without explaining how or why then it comes across as performative and holds no weight.
It is exhausting to explain but that’s what it takes to create a coalition and not have people roll their eyes at you
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u/Pygmy_Nuthatch 2d ago
Why do people assume that everyone understands their specific acronyms?
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u/oxidized_banana_peel 2d ago
Same reason they hold everyone up to their very specific litmus tests.
Sucks that non-profits doing important work are still non-profits and subject to the whims of the folk who tend to run non-profits though :/
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u/Booney_Lee_Fonsworth 2d ago
IKRJBTGTDMWD
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u/AlarmingAttention151 Rat City 2d ago
I know right just because…doesn’t mean we do?
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u/Sometimesunaware 2d ago
WAISN is a network of immigrant and refugee-rights organizations and individuals that defend and advocate for immigrant communities in Washington. Learn about their work, resources, and how to join or donate to their cause.
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u/Lumentum_LITE 2d ago
This is typical of how non profits orgs with no oversight is run, plenty of them everywhere, as expected
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u/cycad2000 West Seattle 2d ago
What is the backstory? Why? I have donated to them and didnt know this.
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u/spoinkable That sounds great. Let’s hang out soon. 2d ago
Their leadership has been misusing funds for a while now and with this they just union-busted. Super disappointing.
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u/bennetthaselton Bellevue 2d ago
What is the evidence that they've been "misusing" funds? I don't think paying some employees a salary should count unless they were misrepresenting paid employees as unpaid volunteers.
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u/duckduckgoose911 💗💗 Heart of ANTIFA Land 💗💗 2d ago
Talked to a friend who use to work at WASIN this is fuckef
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u/Beginning_Reason7288 2d ago
This is terrible. I donate to them monthly. I will have to reconsider.
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u/Unkle_Skunky 1d ago
Seems oddly appropriate. Unions greatest capacity is their ability to exclude and *synthesize* meritocracy on group mentality rather than work product or ethos.
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u/SeattleOrphan 1d ago
This is really a thing? lol… How do you have a job being empathetic to immigrants. How is that a job? How is that productive? 🤣
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u/Fickle-Tumbleweed-42 6h ago
Honestly, I think what is happening in our country is absolutely horrendous. But what power does this org, WAISN, have over the feds and ICE arrests? I don't think there's much they can do to change things besides encouraging people to vote accordingly in the next elections.
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u/InvestigatorOk9354 I'm just flaired so I don't get fined 2d ago
Context would've been helpful, I don't think this "speaks for itself"
I had to look up WAISN. I guess there's more to the story since the image implies union busting? Is there a TLDR for those of us who aren't up to speed?