Since Inauguration Day ushered in a vastly different landscape for refugees and immigrants in the US, we at Ithaca Welcomes Refugees have strived to nimbly respond to, or at times try to anticipate, each new policy, executive order, and government memo which affect our refugee and immigrant friends and neighbors. The people we work alongside as they resettle in this community are feeling scared, uncertain, and anxious.
In addition to our regular programming, here is what the IWR community has been doing over the past few months:
- Conducting Know Your Rights presentations so that immigrants know what their constitutionally protected rights are in circumstances involving interactions with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who are not known for upholding those rights. Several people whom IWR has supported volunteered as translators to help deliver this information.
- Connecting people who had yet to file asylum applications with immigration law firms and paying their legal fees. Having a pending asylum application, which one can claim if one faced persecution of some kind in one’s home country, has historically and legally meant people could not be deported, although we are seeing news reports that the Trump administration has deported some asylees anyway.
- Holding a Family Emergency Preparedness information session, with the help of two local family law attorneys, to explain options for placing IWR families’ children under the temporary guardianship of a trusted adult in case parents are detained or deported. Several people whom IWR has supported volunteered as translators to help deliver this information.
- Meeting with families affected by the possible termination of the CHNV (Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela) humanitarian parole program, who have been told by the Department of Homeland Security that they need to leave the US by April 24, unless they have another basis for remaining in the country. DHS also announced that parole-based work permits for this group will expire on April 24. In a positive development, earlier this week a U.S. District Court Judge ordered that Trump cannot revoke CHNV parole status. However, since recent precedent suggests the administration may defy court orders, our support to families from these countries remains a priority. We, in consultation with immigration lawyers, interpret “another basis for remaining in the country” as including a pending asylum application. Some IWR families will not be eligible to apply for asylum-based work permits for some months, depending on the date asylum was filed. If parole-based work permits are indeed terminated for people from the affected countries, we intend to help those families with household expenses until they are once again allowed to work.
Here is what we are keeping an eye on:
- After indefinitely pausing refugee resettlement, the Trump administration was ordered by a judge to allow the refugees who had had pending flights at the time the pause was initiated to be resettled in the US. The administration is stalling, saying the infrastructure no longer exists to resettle refugees in the US. This is because the administration itself had defunded federally designated refugee resettlement agencies and they have had to lay off much of their staff.
- In March, the administration stated it would make a decision in April about the fate of Ukrainian refugees residing in the US on temporary programs.
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