Stepping Up to Protect Refugees | Justin
South Providence
A lot is going on with the stop work orders, the stop of the funding. I’m just busy. Our work has kind of transitioned from resettling refugees to protecting refugees. Because of the administration.
There’s a lot more going on with the ICE raids. We’re just making sure that we’re informed to know what to do in a situation with an ICE raid. We inform the clients what to do if they get stopped by ICE or law enforcement.
I’m the Director of Refugee Resettlement. I’ve been working in refugee resettlement for probably about 10 years now. I started off as a researcher with my master’s degree working on peace building, conflict transformation, and the ramifications of conflict on displacing individuals. And then I served as a UN intern in Tanzania where I actually got to work in the refugee camps. The Nyarugusu, Nduta, and Mtendeli camps with Burundian and Congolese refugees. That was an amazing experience. And then I came to Rhode Island. I first started working as a Refugee Resettlement Case Manager, did that for two years, then was promoted to Assistant Director of Resettlement. Now I serve as the Director of Resettlement at another local non-profit in Providence.
I love it. I wake up every single day, my wife actually jokes that I wake up excited to go to work every day. I can’t think of anything else to do. A lot of our jobs were insecure with the new administration. There’s lots of layoffs. People weren’t sure what’s gonna happen with the funding cuts and some people were jumping ship just to protect themselves, make sure they have a secure job, more money. I was willing to stay in this field whether it came to a pay cut, or a demotion if need be.
I think refugees need us more than ever now. I decided to stay no matter what the pay was gonna be or what the work was going to be.
All other nonprofits and community services, we were told to stop working. So funding did stop. But nothing specific, it’s happening across the board to every organization. In fact, we’ve been able to double down and focus on other areas where we support refugees, so that’s very good. No more federal funding officially, that stopped January 24th.
But that’s in court battles right now. I think a judge in Seattle just blocked Trump’s order of stopping the admissions program. So, the refugees who can legitimately come through, they’ve been vetted, they’ve been okay-ed by the embassy. That was blocked, so that should resume soon. But it’s going to be a slow process
A lot of it was putting refugees in other programs where there was funding, and then just working extra hard to find them employment. They’re working, they’re working hard.
I’m hopeful about the way it’ll evolve, absolutely. I think the federal government does help a lot, can help a lot, but we live in a great state, a great city, where our state is doing good work, our city is doing good work to protect us, protect the refugees and our community members. Even without the funding from the federal government, we have great state officials, great people who work at local agencies. And then the community just steps up, like today we had donations dropped off. We’ve had monetary donations, we’ve had furniture donations. Even without the federal help, the community steps up.
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