Hundreds of asylum-seekers are camped out near Seattle. There’s a vacant motel next door

KENT, Wash. (AP) — Kabongo Kambila Ringo stood outside the tent where he has been staying with his pregnant wife and ate from a clear plastic tray of Girl Scout cookies melting in the midday sun.

He was one of around 240 asylum-seekers camping in a grassy lot along a highway south of Seattle, wondering if police would follow through on threats to arrest them for trespassing, and hoping officials instead might let them move into the vacant motel next door.

“It’s very difficult,” the 29-year-old from Congo told The Associated Press in French. “There’s not enough to eat. There’s not even a way to wash ourselves.”

The cluster of tarp-covered tents that have covered the field in Kent, a Seattle suburb, since last weekend highlights the strain facing many communities — even some far from the U.S.-Mexico border — as President Joe Biden attempts to restrict asylum and neutralize immigration as a political liability ahead of this fall’s election.

Some Democratic-led northern cities have seen huge influxes of migrants. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has sent more than 40,000 asylum-seekers to Chicago, mostly by bus or plane.

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