Refugee resettlement centers and the families they serve are navigating the sharp changes in policy under the Trump administration. Interfaith Works is trying to keep services running despite Trump’s attempts to suspend resettlement programs and funding.
President and CEO Beth Broadway said they prepared for the possibility of President Trump returning to office by building an endowment.
"We're here to do this work," Broadway said. "In addition to our work to end racism, to do food justice and to serve the needs of elders, we're not going to go away from doing that work just because there's a different president.”
Broadway says in the weeks before Trump took office, they and other agencies around the country conducted a push to settle 32,000 refugees, including 4,000 in New York and 400 in the Syracuse area. Among them were young adult Afghans who were in a refugee camp. But their parents didn’t make it.
“Think about what that would be like if those were your older teenage children in a brand-new country by themselves," Broadway said. "And their parents...they may not see them for at least 4 years. This is a tragedy of grand proportions.”
Trump has issued a flood of executive orders relating to refugees and immigration, and many of them are being challenged in court. Broadway said there’s a difference between those coming without documents and refugees.
“They've been examined by the US State Department. They've been examined by Homeland Security. They've been examined by the United Nations," Broadway said. "That's why it takes so long is people are vetted ahead of time, and that has not changed. So when this executive order says we have to make sure this program is safe, everybody knows that refugees are the safest people to come. “
Broadway says laws also allow asylum for immigrants without documents at our borders who step on American soil and say they’re not safe to go home.
