PORTLAND, Ore. — Inside a hotel near the Portland airport, 80 asylum seekers are living on borrowed time.
Gabriela Morales and her daughter left Venezuela for the U.S. six months ago. Morales was told she would find help in Portland as she waits for her asylum claim to process.
“I tried to find work in Chicago; there wasn't anything. They told me that it was better here, that there are jobs — that they provide help here,” she said.
A local nonprofit called the Interfaith Movement for Immigrant Justice, or IMIrJ, has been paying for her and dozens of others to stay in a hotel for the past month. That nonprofit ran out of money for the program last week.
