Refugee aid group World Relief to close local office

built to support the much larger number,” Gray said.

World Relief will continue to assist refugees with citizenship applications and other issues at its Baltimore legal clinic and will refer them to other local nonprofits, such as the International Rescue Committee, for other services.

The presence of other refugee resettlement agencies was a chief consideration in deciding which offices to close, Gray said.

“We want the best for the refugees who have already been welcomed into a community,” she said. “We’re trying to be as responsible as we can in the middle of difficult situation.”

Baltimore — with its relatively inexpensive cost of living and proximity to Washington — hosts a number of refugee and immigration agencies, including the Catholic Relief Services and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.

Ruben Chandrasekar, executive director of the local branch of the International Rescue Committee, said his organization has between 80 and 85 full-time staff at its locations in Baltimore and Silver Spring. The IRC resettled about 900 refugees in the Baltimore area and about 400 in Silver Spring in the last fiscal year, he said.

“We anticipated doing the same this year,” Chandrasekar said, “but the executive order has obviously put some question marks behind those numbers.”

Funding for most refugee resettlement organizations is largely provided by administrative fees paid by the State Department based on the number of resettlements each group manages, he said. When the flow of refugees stops, he said, nonprofits must scale back.

The IRC has not made plans to reduce staffing, Chandrasekar said.

Baltimore, which has struggled to rebound from years of population decline, is the perfect place for refugees looking to escape dire circumstances and live productive, stable lives, he said. About 85 percent of refugees are self-sufficient within six to eight months of arriving in the U.S.

Chandrasekar praised World Relief’s efforts.

“They’ve done a great job of resettling refugees,” he said. “It’s sad to see the U.S. is shutting its door to the most vulnerable people on the planet.”

Bill Frelick, director of the refugee rights program at Human Rights Watch, said World Relief layoffs will be “a huge loss,” especially for those refugees who are still in the process of being resettled.