The Spokane City Council is poised to take a vote Monday evening on an agreement that would allocate $100,000 to the Spokane Immigrant Rights Coalition (SIRC) for emergency financial assistance and support to immigrant communities amid the nationwide immigration crackdown.
More than 90% of the funding would be given directly to immigrant and refugee families in need to help people meet basic needs like housing, healthcare and utilities. However, the contract would restrict SIRC from using the money to help with legal representation or for lobbying.
SIRC members include community-based nonprofits such as Mujeres in Action, Manzanita House, and Muslims for Community Action and Support (MCAS). The coalition would receive the money under its Community Justice Fund. While the coalition itself functions as a collaborative group of organizations working towards the same goal, MCAS is serving as the fiscal sponsor to receive and distribute the city funding.
Speaking before the city’s Public Infrastructure, Environment and Sustainability Committee on February 9, Sebastian Ruiz of Mujeres in Action explained the fund was created to respond to time-sensitive needs that would have otherwise lacked support.
“This project and our work will prevent families from accumulating future compounding costs and stressors in their lives,” he said.
Officials and the public weighed in on the proposed contract during the committee meeting. That afternoon, the council voted 6-1 in favor of suspending the rules and adding the contract to the February 26 consent agenda, accelerating the process to get dollars out quicker.
The money that would go to SIRC comes from the Spokane Police Department’s community engagement fund. The funding was previously budgeted for a contract with the Spokane Community-Oriented Policing Services that the nonprofit ultimately rejected after receiving less funding than they were used to.
“The decision to reallocate funds was made after thoughtful discussions among the Mayor, her staff, my staff, and myself. Community-centered policing is a fundamental value of SPD, and using the funds this way strongly aligns with that value,” Police Chief Kevin Hall wrote in an email to RANGE. “Policing is about far more than enforcing the law; it also includes fostering perceptions of safety and trust across the entire community. The decision to allocate the funds in this way supports this vision.”
Ruiz noted that 92% of the funds would reach immigrants in need. The remainder would cover administrative fees incurred by MCAS.
“So to give you a sense of the eligible expenses that we’ve paid for in the past … we’ve often had to pay for transportation, meaning gas money. We’ve had to pay for temporary lodging. We’ve had to pay for short-term child care or interpretation services for those types of cases, and we’ve also had to pay for necessary medical appointments," Ruiz said.
That’s because immigration check-ins or hearings in Tacoma can at times change on short notice, essentially forcing people to drop everything and miss work or school to head to their appointments, he explained.
“We even help people cover communication costs with family members that are detained by ICE, so there's a lot of urgent work to be done here,” Ruiz said.
Public input
Overall, the proposal evoked strong support from the public during the committee hearing as residents and community leaders urged city officials to show support for immigrant communities.
Pat Castaneda, the executive director of Manzanita House, emphasized the importance of the proposal’s focus on providing emergency aid coupled with accountability standards and procedures that would serve to ensure equity and proper use of funds.
“This funding is not an abstract policy. It is immediate, practical stabilization for neighbors facing real crisis,“ she said.
Dr. Alyssa Hensley, a public commenter, also expressed support for the contract, making note of ICE's presence in the community and the need to provide a holistic approach to supporting immigrant communities.
“You can’t just ban things; you also have to do stuff. So the 100k here, 92% of it, is going to go direct to our immigrant neighbors, and this is a huge help. And frankly, not enough. But please at least do this,” Hensley said.
The contract also garnered some opposition.
Jennyfer Mesa, executive director of Latinos en Spokane (LeS), said she opposed the agreement because the allocation had not been “consulted or shared” with other groups who serve immigrants, including her own organization.
“And although the intentions are good, I feel like it should’ve been a broader outreach. A broader discussion with all immigrant-serving groups,” she said. “While SIRC has distributed funds to immigrants — and I have participated with them — simply passing out money right now is not always the greatest solution, especially when we have so many urgencies.“
Mesa also expressed that she held concerns over SIRC receiving the contract because of its designation as a coalition rather than as an established organization or nonprofit, which she said reflected limitations in governance, oversight and fiscal accountability.
In a letter sent to council members after the committee meeting, Mesa reiterated her opposition to the contract and her concerns. She claimed SIRC was not immigrant-led, BIPOC-led, or community-based.
“As a co-founder of SIRC, I helped form the community group in 2019 and later chose to step away once it became clear that positions for immigrants would not be created and that leadership would remain housed continuously within Fuse, led by non-immigrant leadership,” she wrote. Fuse Washington is a grassroots organization and member of SIRC.
The majority of the coalition is composed of immigrant- and BIPOC-led organizations. It’s unclear when Mesa split from SIRC.
Mesa’s further criticisms of SIRC outlined in the letter included what she described as two occasions in which LeS has had to “correct serious errors made by SIRC representatives in clients’ immigration cases.” She did not provide specific details on these cases to RANGE.
LeS clarified their stance in a press release sent to RANGE and other outlets, following media coverage of the contract.
“Disagreement within advocacy spaces shouldn’t be framed as hostility or opposition. Immigration advocacy requires collaboration, dialogue, and the ability to hold differing perspectives while working toward systemic change. Redirecting energy toward lateral conflict detracts from addressing the larger structural systems that continue to harm immigrant communities,” the statement reads.
The statement also urges strategic and systemic investment by the city, including a transparent public process, prioritization of structural investments like ongoing funding for legal help for immigrant families, and inclusive representation and oversight.
SIRC members did not return RANGE’s requests for comment before publishing.
Responding to needs
Following the public testimony and speaking before the committee, Deputy City Administrator Maggie Yates said that the city worked closely with procurement and legal officials in the drafting of the contract. Additionally, she explained that the city had held an informal Request for Proposals process, which is in line with procurement requirements for amounts under $250,000.
Mayor Lisa Brown, Council President Betsy Wilkerson (who sponsored the agenda item) and former council member Lili Navarrete convened a roundtable last year with service providers and members of the immigrant and refugee community to discuss needs and how the city could offer support, said Jerrall Haynes, the city's civil rights and equity director.
“This fund and the creation of it is just one of the many examples that came out of those conversations,” he said.
SIRC has distributed about $30,000 a year to Spokane immigrants since 2021, according to the September letter they sent to the city. But as a result of lost grant funding in 2025, the amount of emergency aid the coalition was able to distribute has notably decreased.
“As a result, hundreds of immigrants have been left without this critical helpline to quickly receive dollars in times of crisis,“ the letter reads.
During the council’s agenda review meeting on February 9, Wilkerson noted city officials had talked about supporting immigrant communities in the summer of 2025 following federal rulings and uncertainty regarding funding.
Around that time, Spokane experienced an uptick in violent immigration enforcement and arrests of anti-ICE protesters.
Wilkerson said during the council’s agenda review session on February 9 that the first email she received was opposed to the city providing any funds for undocumented immigrants.
“Well, we have legal immigrants in our community that need support, and this is where those funds will be going,” she added.
Following Wilkerson’s comments, Council Member Michael Cathcart said the funding would also be available to undocumented immigrants based on the language of the agreement.
Council Member Sarah Dixit swiftly responded, making note that immigrants pay taxes into the state regardless of their legal status, and should be supported through the funding.
A study from the Washington State Budget and Policy Center found that undocumented people in Washington paid $997 million in state and local taxes in 2022. The study also highlights the contributions of undocumented people to various labor sectors in the state, including farms and construction.
Council's position
Cathcart, who voted against suspending the rules and adding the contract to the February 23 agenda, said he requested a substantial legal review and fiscal review regarding the source of funding and other legal questions.
“I mean, we can quibble over the size; 100k is still a lot of money, and I think we have a deficit that is existing. It’s growing, and it’s going to be here at the end of the year, and so we have a desperate need for money,” he added.
However, the majority of the council appeared supportive of funding the agreement during the meeting. Additionally, some members noted the two weeks between introduction and a vote gave officials adequate time for further review and potential amendments.
“I just know that there’s a lot of need in our community right now, and I want to make sure that we can meet that need in our community,“ Council Member Zack Zappone said during the February 9 council’s Agenda Review.
Speaking to RANGE, Council Member Paul Dillon noted the reallocation of money for the SIRC contract did not diminish any other funds. He added that city officials would keep an eye on how the funds are disbursed and what the need is.
“Everyone deserves to be safe, to feel safe, regardless of where they were born,” he said. “Being able to have this fund allows that rapid response that if something does happen, there’s the ability to move quickly to help support families and people who are going into, quite frankly, what is a disappearing machine.”
