State could see hundreds of refugees
NEW HAVEN — Local advocates believe the Biden administration is bringing good news, with the president recently quadrupling the national cap on annual refugee acceptances to 62,500.
Chris George, executive director of the New Havenbased refugee resettlement agency Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services, said it likely would have an immediate positive effect on Connecticut’s refugee population.
“We’ll be going from welcoming fewer than 100 refugees per year to perhaps welcoming 500 refugees per year,” he said.
“It means that some of their relatives who have been waiting for four years might finally be able to come to the United States and join them from Syria, from Iraq, from Afghanistan and Congo,” he said. “That’s a very specific, tangible result.”
Because of the decrease in refugees offered admittance into the nation under the Trump administration, George said IRIS’ revenue decreased and the group became more reliant upon private donors than before. Now, with an expected increase in refugees to be resettled, George said IRIS expects to increase its staff. Many of the new roles will focus on the most immediate resettlement needs, such as finding housing, employment and health care for newly-arrived refugees.
George said IRIS also will continue to expand a project it has had in the works predating Trump — a community-based resettlement project. Local coalitions of community groups, such as religious and university organizations, will take on the role of providing assistance and support to newlyarrived refugees.
Because of the previous decrease in the number of refugees, George said IRIS turned its operational attention toward those living in the country illegally over the last few years.
“It’s a lot of what we put under the umbrella of case management: it can include helping with housing if you’re at risk of being evicted, it includes connecting you to health care, finding ways to get health care even though you don’t have government insurance and helping your children in school, and it means enrolling you in our weekly food pantry,” he said. “We’re optimistic that eventually we will have comprehensive immigration reform and we’ll be a global leader in immigrant resettlement again.”
Fear and hope
Juana Islas has been in the United States for 17 years and has three American children, but she worries about being separated from them.
Islas said she left behind poverty in a Mexican village to pursue a dream; she works days at a day care and nights cleaning a hospital, and because of her status she is not eligible for government assistance.
Amid that fear, Islas, local advocates for refugees and those living in the country without legal permission said they want President Joe Biden’s actions to match his rhetoric on immigration reform.
“He promised immigration reform in his first 100 days,” said Islas. “I don’t see any change.”
Other local advocates give Biden mixed reviews, saying the political environment for immigrants is less frightening than it was under Trump and Biden has begun to reverse some of Trump’s policies. However, some still feel the president must do more to further reform the nation’s immigration system.
When Biden was the U.S. vice president under President Barack Obama, Islas’ brother Josemaria was arrested by Hamden police in connection with an attempted robbery he did not commit — a witness gave him an alibi at the time of the incident. Before his case was resolved, he was turned over to immigration authorities and was incarcerated for months.
Islas said the fear that her community feels has lessened, but there is still a prevailing sense that Biden has not kept his promises.
In late March, the U.S. Supreme Court handed people in the country without authorization an apparent victory in its 6-3 ruling in Niz-Chavez v. Garland. The court ruled that a Guatemalan man living in Michigan was not adequately notified of the details of his deportation hearing; New Haven-based immigration attorney Glenn Formica believes the impact this decision will have on immigration law is “wide open,” although he hopes Biden will use it as leverage with congressional Republicans.
“The question is enough for Biden to say the Supreme Court says these (hearing notifications) are invalid, so he’s going to pass a regulation. Just the threat of voiding (over 1 million) deportation orders might be enough to get Republicans running to the table,” he said.
Formica said he believes the result of the Niz-Chavez decision will be a “slow burn” and may take years to play out legally if it is not dealt with legislatively.
“If the system grinds to a halt trying to accommodate this new decision, that’s going to have political ramifications on both sides of the aisle,” he said.
For Formica’s clients in Connecticut, though, he said it provides a new appellate issue to introduce in immigration court to give another opportunity to some of the most “helpless cases.”
Bennett Pudlin, a former attorney, is one of a team of volunteers helping Formica with some of his cases. He said that, with a mailing list of about 600 people associated with Connecticut Shoreline Indivisible, “under Glenn’s direction we’ve been providing support for immigrants who are fighting deportation in immigration court.” For their part, that means some of the back-end work, such as help procuring documents and witnesses, as well as emotional and community support.
“Almost every one of the cases we’re doing with Glenn involve... violence, and almost all of our clients are female; some are, or were when we started, children,” Pudlin said.
Despite the uncertainty of what the Biden administration will accomplish legislatively, Formica said he believes his administration is not pursuing deportation cases as aggressively as his predecessor.
“(U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) has been standing down and not chasing people and asking them to buy plane tickets,” he said. “I think Trump definitely changed the tone, and there’s a question of whether Biden is a change of tone or a true change of policy.”
Pudlin said he believes Biden has done more than change the tone, having reversed several Trump-era regulations on immigration, but those changes have largely represented a return to Obama-era status quo thus far.
Formica said he has noticed no people seeking sanctuary as a final option to avoid deportation, and he believes that will be a consistent trend throughout the Biden years. He said the federal government has shown some discretion it had not in the past, such as allowing one of his clients to be at her husband’s bedside in Honduras as he was dying.
Pudlin said the Niz-Chavez decision is not “a panacea in the long run” to give those here without authorization a better legal standing, but it does mean a large number of active deportation cases might need to be refiled.
“In the past, the courts have looked to interpretations of international law to guide the interpretation of our law and the Trump people departed entirely from that,” he said. “I want to see that fixed so people who have valid claims to asylum in this country can live here without fear and get on with their lives.”
For now, Islas said local activists will be relentless in demanding those reforms.
“We will not stop fighting until we are heard. We will not stop marching in the streets until we are heard. The president needs to hear us,” she said.