Amsalu Kassaw got here to the USA from Ethiopia 17 years in the past. As he left, he feared arrest by way of the Tigrayan Other folks’s Liberation Entrance, a left-wing paramilitary workforce then in control of the African nation.
The 42-year-old father of 3 now works as a lieutenant for the GEO Crew, the personal contractor that runs the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention heart in Aurora.
That juxtaposition will for sure be in thoughts all through Kassaw’s swearing-in rite Monday, as he turns into the primary immigrant of colour to sit down at the Aurora Town Council. Final month, the council selected him, in a 6-4 vote, from a box of 3 hopefuls to fill an at-large seat vacated within the fall by way of former Councilman Dustin Zvonek.
Kassaw, now a U.S. citizen, sees not anything bizarre concerning the intersection of his activity overseeing detained immigrants in Aurora and his tale as a refugee from Ethiopia who sought new alternatives out of the country.
“I give myself for instance of easy methods to observe the foundations,” he stated.
Kassaw is launching his political occupation in a town that has grow to be a flash level within the country’s immigration debate. President-elect Donald Trump staged a marketing campaign rally within the town in October amid headlines about participants of a Venezuelan jail gang attacking and intimidating citizens at a trio of rental structures within the town.
Recriminations between Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman and Denver Mayor Mike Johnston — over the surge of migrants Colorado has observed within the remaining two years, and whether or not Denver has quietly driven a few of them into Aurora, as Coffman alleges — have grow to be a contentious matter of past due.
Kassaw can even have to barter stressful members of the family between the council and the neighborhood, which for months has protested and disrupted council conferences over the police taking pictures of an unarmed Black guy remaining spring.
Kassaw, a Republican, stated he would use the abilities he honed in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital. There, he labored for Imaginative and prescient for Justice Ethiopia, a civic group he stated was once charged with “bringing political events to the desk.” There are greater than 80 ethnic teams within the nation, he stated.
Whilst his conciliatory position were given Kassaw categorised a “political opponent” worthy of arrest by way of the Ethiopian executive, it generally is a an important talent set for coping with Aurora’s personal patchwork of ethnicities. The town of greater than 400,000 is Colorado’s maximum racially and ethnically various — greater than 1 in 5 citizens had been born out of doors this nation.
Following the ones of Mexican ancestry, the next-largest workforce of foreign-born citizens in Aurora is Ethiopian — at just about 5,000 other folks, in line with a town file.
“My background can assist deliver other folks in combination,” Kassaw stated. “I will paintings onerous to be the bridge between the neighborhood and elected officers. I’m very open — and open to discussing anything else.”
Priscilla Rahn, a former vice chair of the Colorado Republican Birthday celebration who ran unsuccessfully for Douglas County commissioner remaining 12 months, known as Kassaw “fair-minded” and a “connector.”
“He’s now not an hostile particular person. He needs to deliver other folks in combination,” she stated. “He’s a de-escalator.”
And he’ll be valuable at achieving out to Aurora’s immigrant neighborhood, Rahn stated, particularly because the incoming Trump management 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 enjoy and understands the method of coming right here,” she stated. “His message is strictly the similar message you wish to have to ship to the remainder of the rustic: You want to come back the prison means.”
Kassaw, who stated he leaned on his Christian religion, indexed his best priorities as a soon-to-be council member as making sure the security and safety of all Aurorans and serving to small companies within the town flourish.
“When you damage the regulation, there must be penalties for that,” he stated. “Everyone needs their kids so that you could pass out at the streets safely.”
Kassaw should run for the seat within the November election if he needs to stay at the council.
Nigusse Beyene, the manager director of Aurora-based International Refugee Answers, has the same opinion that refugees within the nation must “observe the guideline of regulation.” A fellow Ethiopian, he calls Kassaw “one among us.”
However he stated the brand new councilman must do extra than simply make remarks from the dais in the case of finding out the fraught problems dealing with Colorado’s third-largest town.
“He has to paintings day and evening at the floor with the neighborhood,” Beyene stated. “It’s important to do the paintings of the folks — or it’s going to be difficult for him.”
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