People who help resettle refugees in Vermont are scrambling after the Trump administration made seismic changes to the federal scaffolding surrounding that work.
In his first day back in office, President Trump signed an executive order temporarily halting the entry of new refugees into the U.S.
And late last week, his administration paused funding for groups that support refugees getting acclimated to their new homes.
Tracy Dolan is director of the State Refugee Office. She joined host Mary Engisch to talk about what these actions mean for refugees resettling in Vermont, and Dolan highlighted the impact of the pause in federal funding. This piece was produced for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript, which has been edited for length and clarity.
Tracy Dolan: On Jan. 24, all refugee resettlement agencies received a letter that said, as of today, you must stop all work on the Reception and Placement Program, which is really that intensive work that happens in the first three months after a refugee arrives.
So these were refugees who already were here. And the work in that three months is simply to help them sign up for any kind of employment opportunities, any benefits they may be eligible for, assist them into moving into apartments.
Many of them go to work right away, so that work early on allows them to quickly start their lives here and begin their path towards self-sufficiency.
Mary Williams Engisch: Regarding that Reception and Placement that you were just talking about, that work stoppage, does that affect people who do that work in Vermont?
Tracy Dolan: That stop work order came out and had an immediate impact here in Vermont. It also had an immediate impact on staffing, because those agencies were told that no staff that are working on those projects would able to be paid beyond that day.
Mary Williams Engisch: And Tracy, NPR and other news organizations reporting that, according to a State Department memo, some refugees who were slated to travel to the United States in the coming days and weeks, some of them, after waiting for years, had their flights canceled. Has that affected any refugees who were slated to come to Vermont?
Tracy Dolan: Here in Vermont, the impact on people who were waiting for their relatives to arrive is significant.
In particular, I'm thinking about Afghans who fought alongside the U.S. military several years ago, just before they were evacuated, and now who are here and waiting for their families to come. Many of those flights are canceled, and or, processes are put on hold for any of their family members to arrive and join them.
But also, other refugees here who have been waiting for family members to join through other programs, also do not know what the fate of their situation is.
Mary Williams Engisch: Can you remind us of the number of people you were expecting in Vermont this year?
Tracy Dolan: We had expected that we would receive approximately 650 refugees in this federal fiscal year, and we had received about 160 when the executive order was enacted halting all refugee arrivals.
Mary Williams Engisch: Were state organizations that work with refugees and immigrants able to sort of, perhaps, prepare and see that this might be coming, because this is the second Trump administration, and similar things happened in the first?
Tracy Dolan: The first executive order stopping all refugee arrivals was somewhat expected. That did occur in the first Trump administration, and we had heard unofficially from our federal partners that that was likely to happen. It was somewhat surprising that they were also going to cancel flights that were happening that week.
The other executive orders were definitely a surprise. Reception and Placement services have never been suspended in the history of refugee resettlement in the United States, and that was shocking and sudden and immediate.
Mary Williams Engisch: Does the pace of these changes feel extra challenging? They're sort of coming without a lot of forward notice or collaboration with states and non-governmental groups that are impacted by them.
Tracy Dolan: I'll speak for my partners who are in the community — mostly. It's a fire hose at the state level, for people like me, but I would say even more so for the people and community partners on the ground who work with people day-to-day. I think you said, not a lot of notice — literally, we're receiving letters and orders sometimes at 5 p.m. and being told that they're in effect right now or the next morning.
Mary Williams Engisch: How will your office go about its work going forward, and are things different, given this pause on admitting new refugees to the United States?
Tracy Dolan: What is Vermont doing? We're continuing to do what we do, which is really announcing to the country and to the world that we are a welcoming place. Local people are continuing to try to do what they can to support refugees and other displaced populations and welcome them and connect them to services, connect them to jobs, and connect them to communities.
And we will remain hopeful that things turn around and that we eventually can get back to doing significant refugee resettlement in this state, because we're good at it, and the refugees have had a lot of success here.
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