Last Friday, Vashon Havurah hosted a Refugee Shabbat — a service affirming the human rights and dignity of immigrants, asylum seekers, refugees and other displaced people worldwide and here on Vashon.
With all the elements of the traditional Shabbat service, the evening was also a call for resistance to actions taken by President Donald Trump’s administration on national immigration and international human rights policies.
The Refugee Shabbat is a global event, now in its seventh year — a project of Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), a nonprofit that provides services to refugees and asylum seekers worldwide, while also advocating for their fundamental rights, according to its website, hias.org.
HIAS, as a plaintiff to a lawsuit over Trump’s executive order that suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, scored a victory on Feb. 25, when a federal judge in Seattle blocked the order, saying it was likely that the Trump administration had exceeded its lawful authority in suspending a program established by law in 1980.
With these and other battles underway, Suzanne Greenberg, president of the Vashon Havurah, opened the Shabbat service.
“While we need the moments of respite to take care of our emotional and physical bodies, we also cannot afford to sit this out,” she said as she stood before a crowd of about 40 people who had gathered. “We cannot prematurely capitulate, as that is what an authoritarian regime wants of us — especially if we are privileged people who are not in the crosshairs. We must use that privilege to reach out and protect those who are frightened.”
And so, after Greenberg led the congregation in ushering in the Shabbat with traditional candle lighting, songs and prayers, she welcomed several speakers to share advocacy information, personal stories and poetry that pertained to the theme of the evening.
Merna Ann Hecht, an island poet, activist and social justice educator, movingly read a compilation of powerful poetry written by refugee and immigrant youth she had mentored, to the somber accompaniment of Michelle Dobson on cello.
Jenna Riggs, a member of Indivisible Vashon, detailed the work of that organization’s Immigrant/Refugee Rights group and shared information about how to connect to other organizations protecting the rights of immigrants.
These groups include the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, which has created “Know Your Rights” flyers in English and Spanish (nwirp.org/resources/kyr); and the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network (waisn.org), which has opened a deportation hotline that islanders can call if they hear rumors about or see Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers on Vashon.
The hotline, at 844-724-3737, is open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, and should be used instead of spreading rumors and possibly false information on social media, Riggs said.
“It’s one of the main ways to keep our island community members safe, by not spreading fear unnecessarily,” she said.
Another speaker, islander and United States Marine Corps veteran Leo Medina, shared the searingly personal story of his own family’s experience with ICE, which resulted in the deportation of his mother when he was a young teenager, forever changing the trajectory of his life.
“What happened to me and my family still impacts me every day of my life,” he said, while noting that his story did not just belong to him. “This is the reality of so many others who live in constant fear of those knocks at the doors — other mothers, fathers, sons, daughters and siblings who have to choose between silence and stigma, who carry the weight of something that they never asked for.”
Immigration, Medina said, is much more than a political issue.
“It’s a human issue, it’s about families,” he said. “It’s about the children forced to grow up too fast, about resilience, about survival and the love that stretches across borders but is never quite whole again.”
