‘Work of passion:’ How Catalina Velasquez’s life led her to immigrant rights advocacy

Ask Catalina Velasquez anything about queer, feminist immigrant rights. She’ll have an answer. 

Velasquez heads Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network, which is the largest immigrant-led coalition in Washington, alongside Brenda Rodriguez Lopez. A refugee from Colombia herself, Velasquez was the first transgender Latina appointed as a Commissioner for the D.C. Office of Latino Affairs.

Her work at WAISN includes advocating for immigrants at the state Legislature, which recently granted $28.4 million to expand health care access for immigrants without legal status, $25 million to support newly arrived migrants and $7.5 million to King County and the city of Tukwila to provide housing support for new arrivals. Lawmakers also passed bills removing immigration status requirements for professional licenses and funding dual language and tribal language education.

Aside from her experience in the immigrant rights space, she’s held leadership positions at various progressive non-profits organizing for reproductive justice, sexual assault survivors and more. Currently, she’s finishing a Ph.D. in Feminist Studies at the University of Washington, where she occasionally teaches trans and feminist studies classes.

The Standard spoke with Velasquez to learn more about why it’s important for queer, trans people to hold leadership positions in the immigration rights movement and what Washington has done — and still needs to do — for its migrant population. 

How did you end up in immigrant rights advocacy?

It’s work of passion, but it’s definitely not a career that I grew up thinking I was going to pursue. My family got detained at the Krome Detention Center in South Florida. That just set me off for a lifetime of self advocacy. 

[My family was] deported in February of 2009. I went over 15 years without hugging my parents. That set me off in a situation where I was houseless, I was hungry, I didn’t have any resources. I had to figure things out by myself while being a full-time student at a very rigorous academy. That politicized me. 

I was outraged that my family was deported. It also reflected a much larger systemic issue: expelling immigrants out of the country without accounting for how the U.S. has exacerbated poverty, inequality and violence, especially in Latin America. 

I moved to Seattle to pursue my Ph.D. after Trump’s election. The anti-immigrant sentiment wasn’t new: It was just how unapologetic and cruel it was that instilled a lot of fear in me at that time and pushed me to transform that fear and anger into action. 

You recently won The National LGBTQ+ Task Force’s Creating Change Immigration Award. Why is it important for queer voices to be in the immigrant rights space?

What’s important here is yes to representation, no to tokenism. I have over 15 years of work experience leading other spaces. It’s representation with the skills, with the knowledge that makes my leadership. It’s important for me to say that because people think we land in this place just by virtue of who we are. 

We live in a world where over 80 countries criminalize people based on sexual orientation and gender identity. That means a lot of people will naturally seek refuge in a place that won’t put you in jail or persecute you for being trans or liking someone of the same gender. 

Let me tell you a perfect example [of why intersectionality matters]: I did not dare to be publicly trans until I had at least a job permit and then access to hormones. That would not have happened if I had not been expatriated under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. 

Going back to state politics: we’re coming off of a very busy 60-day legislative session. What went well for you this session and what didn’t?

We’re not crediting anybody but immigrants for what we’ve been able to win for ourselves. I want to acknowledge our partners of course and legislative champions in both the House and Senate as well as our strong and resilient community leaders. We were able to send over 12,462 letters to lawmakers. We were able to bring over 400 people to a lobby day this session. We had over 70 organizations signed on in support of our campaigns in less than 24 hours. We had over 139 calls to legislature legislators. This is the work of immigrants.

Oftentimes, journalism in Washington loves to celebrate white elected officials and not the brown people that made this happen. No white [lawmaker] woke up and said ‘What could we do for immigrants today?’ Immigrants had to bring the urgency, bring the issues, bring the solutions, bring the strategy. 

The Legislature approved money for Tukwila’s asylum-seekers, presumably in reference to the hundreds of migrants camped outside Riverton Park United Methodist Church. Tell me about how this state funding will help those folks.

We need an unemployment insurance program. Communities across Washington — undocumented immigrants — came to Olympia and demanded that. Time and time again, people are asking for basic human safety nets. 

Washington is one of the eight states with the largest number of refugees in the country. We’re proud of that. But that does require resources beyond just welcoming people to sleep on the streets. 

The church is just one of many places where immigrants have found a space to organize ourselves. Riverton Church is once again full and having to turn people away. But there is nowhere for migrants to go. This legislative victory hopefully will turn the tide. 

There are many asylum seekers who need immediate shelter and legal support and the sooner we’re able to navigate this bureaucracy and release those funds the better. 

Okay, one last question. What do you think Washington still needs to do to support its immigrant population?

We know the state cannot pass comprehensive humane immigration reform, but the state needs to take responsibility for the things that they can do. What they can do is make sure immigrants have access to health care and insurance, remove barriers to higher education and fund more opportunities for immigrants. 

Washington should move toward a state that allows undocumented immigrants to vote in their local elections so we are respected and treated with more dignity. We know that’s not possible at the federal level, but we have seen local communities throughout the country begin to have those conversations. In some places like in Maryland, undocumented immigrants can vote for city council and whatnot. 

We’re a border state. We have a lot at stake. We don’t have to follow, we can lead. We can’t just pour money in and put first-aid Band-Aids on hemorrhoids that need to be looked further into.