Amsalu Kassaw got here to america from Ethiopia 17 years in the past. As he left, he feared arrest by the Tigrayan Folks’s Liberation Entrance, a left-wing paramilitary group then in control of the African nation.
The 42-year-old father of three now works as a lieutenant for the GEO Group, the personal contractor that runs the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention middle in Aurora.
That juxtaposition will little question be in thoughts throughout Kassaw’s swearing-in ceremony Monday, as he turns into the primary immigrant of colour to sit on the Aurora Metropolis Council. Final month, the council selected him, in a 6-4 vote, from a discipline of three hopefuls to fill an at-large seat vacated within the fall by former Councilman Dustin Zvonek.
Kassaw, now a U.S. citizen, sees nothing odd in regards to the intersection of his job overseeing detained immigrants in Aurora and his story as a refugee from Ethiopia who sought new alternatives abroad.
“I give myself for example of the right way to observe the principles,” he stated.
Kassaw is launching his political profession in a metropolis that has develop into a flash level within the nation’s immigration debate. President-elect Donald Trump staged a marketing campaign rally within the metropolis in October amid headlines about members of a Venezuelan jail gang attacking and intimidating residents at a trio of condominium buildings within the metropolis.
Recriminations between Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman and Denver Mayor Mike Johnston — over the surge of migrants Colorado has seen within the final two years, and whether or not Denver has quietly pushed a few of them into Aurora, as Coffman alleges — have develop into a contentious subject of late.
Kassaw can even have to barter tense relations between the council and the neighborhood, which for months has protested and disrupted council conferences over the police capturing of an unarmed Black man final spring.
Kassaw, a Republican, stated he would use the talents he honed in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital. There, he labored for Imaginative and prescient for Justice Ethiopia, a civic group he stated was charged with “bringing political events to the desk.” There are greater than 80 ethnic teams within the nation, he stated.
Whereas his conciliatory position received Kassaw labeled a “political opponent” worthy of arrest by the Ethiopian authorities, it could possibly be an important ability set for coping with Aurora’s personal patchwork of ethnicities. The town of greater than 400,000 is Colorado’s most racially and ethnically various — greater than 1 in 5 residents had been born exterior this nation.
Following these of Mexican ancestry, the next-largest group of foreign-born residents in Aurora is Ethiopian — at almost 5,000 individuals, in response to a metropolis report.
“My background may help convey individuals collectively,” Kassaw stated. “I can work exhausting to be the bridge between the neighborhood and elected officers. I’m very open — and open to discussing something.”
Priscilla Rahn, a former vice chair of the Colorado Republican Get together who ran unsuccessfully for Douglas County commissioner final 12 months, referred to as Kassaw “fair-minded” and a “connector.”
“He’s not an adversarial particular person. He needs to convey individuals collectively,” she stated. “He’s a de-escalator.”
And he will likely be invaluable at reaching out to Aurora’s immigrant neighborhood, Rahn stated, particularly because the incoming Trump administration has promised to hold out mass deportations of people who find themselves within the nation illegally — a plan that Trump has dubbed, partly, “Operation Aurora.”
“He’s talking from a spot of expertise and understands the method of coming right here,” she stated. “His message is precisely the identical message you’ll want to ship to the remainder of the nation: You must come the authorized method.”
Kassaw, who stated he leaned on his Christian religion, listed his prime priorities as a soon-to-be council member as guaranteeing the protection and safety of all Aurorans and serving to small companies within the metropolis flourish.
“When you break the regulation, there must be penalties for that,” he stated. “Everyone needs their youngsters to have the ability to exit on the streets safely.”
Kassaw should run for the seat within the November election if he needs to stay on the council.
Nigusse Beyene, the chief director of Aurora-based World Refugee Options, agrees that refugees within the nation must “observe the rule of regulation.” A fellow Ethiopian, he calls Kassaw “considered one of us.”
However he stated the brand new councilman must do extra than simply make remarks from the dais on the subject of checking out the fraught points going through Colorado’s third-largest metropolis.
“He has to work day and evening on the bottom with the neighborhood,” Beyene stated. “You need to do the work of the individuals — or it’s going to be powerful for him.”
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