Rose Done arrived in Connecticut in August 1999 as a refugee fleeing violent unrest in her native Nigeria. Her journey to the state began in a refugee camp in the West African country of Benin, took her to Belgium and to New York City before she boarded a final flight to Bradley International Airport, where her husband was waiting.
Also waiting for her was a studio apartment in Hartford and the members of a small refugee resettlement organization, now called Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services, or IRIS. In the months and years that followed her arrival, they helped Done build a life and turn Connecticut into her home.
But IRIS, and organizations like it, now face an existential threat. Stop-work orders from the Trump administration worth $4 million and the suspension of refugees entering the country have upended IRIS’s work.
“We actually don't know what is going to happen next,” said Maggie Mitchell Salem, the executive director of IRIS. Over the past few weeks, the group has laid off 20% of its staff — more than 20 employees — and is furiously trying to drum up private funding to compensate for the millions of dollars it now lacks to support its clients.
IRIS is far from alone. Refugee resettlement organizations in Connecticut and around the U.S. are scrambling to stay afloat and fight the Trump administration’s decision to abruptly suspend the flow of refugees. Last week, aid groups sued to restart resettlement, joining a growing number of lawsuits against the Trump administration as it moves to shrink the federal bureaucracy from every angle.
Many fear that this is the end of the role that the U.S. has played as a beacon of freedom and hope for refugees whose homes have been destroyed by conflict and who fear persecution in their countries of origin.
Advocates in Connecticut say that locally, refugee resettlement has become a proud, robust tradition, one that dates back more than a century and has innovated in recent years, inspiring new efforts at the national level. They also worry about the impact the administration’s actions will have on those efforts.
“Connecticut is one of the most interesting stories of resettlement in the United States,” said Kathryn Libal, the director of the Human Rights Institute at the University of Connecticut.
'Nobody wants to be uprooted'
Done (pronounced doh-NAY) doesn’t often share her story. Patients at the hospital where she works as a nurse sometimes ask about her background. She’ll tell them, briefly, that she came as a refugee decades ago from Nigeria.
She doesn’t tell them about her childhood memories of her grandmother, a midwife, who delivered babies in their house, and how watching life roar into existence inspired Done to become a nurse. She doesn’t tell them about the region of Ogoniland where she grew up in the Niger Delta, where crude oil riches led to exploitation and unending oil spills that poisoned the water. There, Done’s then-boyfriend joined a protest movement that demanded human rights and environmental justice. Fleeing threats on his life, he ended up in a refugee camp in the neighboring country of Benin. That’s where Done joined him and the two got married.
“Nobody wants to be uprooted from their country. But regardless of whether you live in a hut or you live in a mansion, that’s your home,” said Done, who now resides in a house on a wooded cul-de-sac in central Connecticut. As her neighbors pull into their driveways at sunset, Done departs for the night shift at a local hospital, where she manages a 26-bed unit.
It’s a routine that allows her to sleep when her youngest daughter is at school and work 60 hours a week between two jobs. But, as hard as Done has worked to build a life here, she is quick to credit the case workers from IRIS and the members of a church that took her in. As refugees, Done said, “if someone is not there to help you, there’s absolutely no way you can stand on your feet.”
Just a month after Done arrived in Connecticut, she got pregnant with her first child, a son. IRIS employees helped her get groceries and drove her to doctor’s appointments. When her son was born, they brought her diapers. When Done was ready to start working, they helped find her a first job.
Done’s primary contact at IRIS was case worker Linda Bronstein, and photographs from that time show the two women together at church, smiling brightly.
“We didn't lack food when we came here,” Done said. “If there was anything that we didn't have, they figured out a way to provide it.”
Done fretted over whether she would struggle through nursing classes in English, over which she still hadn't achieved fluency. Members of the church community soothed Done's worries and helped her enroll.
When Bronstein looks back on her work with Done, “the word that comes to mind is strong,” she said. Done was “determined to make something good of her life and willing to work hard. She was personable and everybody liked her. I admire her a lot.”
When her second child was born, Done named her Linda.
“I was pleased and, of course, surprised,” Bronstein said. But the honor wasn’t without precedent — just a few years earlier, a refugee family from Vietnam had named their baby Linda, too.
Connecticut’s role
Since 1980, the U.S. State Department has administered the Refugee Admissions Program through approved resettlement agencies, which then subcontract with smaller organizations like IRIS. Around 100,000 refugees were allowed into the United States in fiscal year 2024 through that program. The program previously hit a record low of 15,000 nationwide during fiscal year 2021, at the end of the first Trump presidency.
Connecticut has historically received an annual influx of refugees proportionate to its population — around 1% of the total number of people coming to the U.S. through the refugee program that year. In 2024, for example, around 100,000 people came to the U.S. through the refugee program, and 1,032 came to Connecticut.
In recent years, advocates say that Connecticut has been a notably receptive and even at times a trailblazing leader in the effort to resettle newcomers. It’s an effort that goes back as far as 1918, when the YMCA established an organization in Bridgeport. Today’s effort is aided by a powerful network of faith-based organizations and community groups that have stepped forward to help refugees fleeing violence and civil war.
Libal, the UConn professor, has been studying the impact of refugee programs for many years, starting during the Iraq war, when veterans played a key role in advocating for the people that had helped them overseas. Then, in 2016, Libal began researching Connecticut’s resettlement efforts more specifically, when large numbers of Syrian refugees were being resettled here.
She found that IRIS received a flood of interest from faith-based groups and ethnic community organizations eager to help Syrian refugees. And so, to meet that demand, IRIS began to look at how it might partner with those groups, a model based on how Canada welcomes refugees.
“IRIS innovated, not only for Connecticut but for the nation, what they called co-sponsorship,” Libal said.
IRIS began training those organizations to do the intensive work of resettlement that takes place during the first 90 days after refugees arrive. As Done experienced, they help by securing housing, connecting refugees with language classes, driving them to medical appointments and enrolling kids in school.
But Libal and her colleagues found that co-sponsorship had a multiplier effect. Whether it was a church-based group or a non-religious community organization, the volunteers began to crowdsource information and resources: How could they get a response for a refugee when a state agency didn't pick up the phone? Could a local business leader find work appropriate for a newcomer? What local support was available for victims of violence?
“In a sense, they were building ties within the community and kind of knitting the fabric of civic life,” Libal said.
At the time, dozens of states tried to keep Syrian refugees out, while Connecticut’s then-governor, Dannel P. Malloy, steadfastly welcomed them in.
Tom Buckley, then a professor of human rights at the University of Connecticut, got involved with the co-sponsorship effort through Westminster Presbyterian Church in West Hartford in 2014. Buckley had worked in a refugee camp in Cambodia. When the chance to do resettlement work came up locally, he quickly volunteered to become the coordinator for his church.
First, Buckley and the congregation helped resettle a family from the Central African Republic. A couple of years later, they had the chance to help a Syrian family, a collaboration between his church and Beth El Synagogue in West Hartford.
“It’s unbelievably rewarding. I get far more back than what I give,” Buckley said. “It gave me a real sense of community, that my community is working toward making us a better place.”
Chris George, the former director of IRIS, credits Connecticut’s extraordinary outreach to a few factors: a long tradition of faith-based groups helping refugees, including Catholic, Lutheran and Jewish congregations. Plus, “Connecticut has a very strong tradition of philanthropy,” said George, in large part because of the dramatic wealth gap.
George said he also made a practice of speaking to the press to publicize the group’s work, in contrast to some of the counterparts he met from other states who were more timid about spreading the word for fear of attracting negative attention.
“I think there is an undercurrent of hospitality and welcoming for refugees everywhere, in every state,” he said. “You just need to find it, and you need to let those people and churches and rotary clubs and synagogues know that you're there and you want their help.”
Now, resettlement groups are hoping that even if the Trump administration cuts off these programs, the goodwill and philanthropic tradition built up in Connecticut will help them to at least continue providing services to refugees already here.
“Private fundraising is how we are going to be able to sustain services,” said Susan Schnitzer, the director of the Connecticut Institute for Refugees and Immigrants, an organization that grew from the YMCA’s work after World War I. “We are staying focused, trying to stay patient and just continuing with our services to our clients. We’ve been around for 107 years, and we’re not going anywhere.”
George says that refugee resettlement is, in many ways, an ideal way to bring new immigrants to the U.S. These newcomers undergo the most rigorous vetting process of any group to immigrate to the country. Resettlement organizations then ensure that they are quickly integrated into society, with resources to develop language skills, enroll in schools and join the workforce. Refugees often fill jobs in needed fields, like home health care and technology. In time, they open businesses and boost the economies of their adopted homes.
“We were blessed with a community across Connecticut that wanted to be part of this great American tradition of resettling refugees,” George said. “And we gave them that opportunity.”
Salem, the current director of IRIS, echoed George’s sentiment.
“The state understands that it needs people to fill the tens of thousands of unfilled jobs in the state, and to support industry and to help the state continue to grow and thrive economically. The state gets it,” she said. “At its heart, this is a state and a governor, as well as the attorney general, who have made very clear that all people are equal residents of the state, and everyone should receive due process and be treated humanely and in accordance with the law. You do not hear that everywhere.”
In a statement, Gov. Ned Lamont echoed that sentiment: “Connecticut has a legacy of being there for those in need and proudly answering the call to welcome refugees, especially from countries the United States is allied with and who supported us over the years. We have historically welcomed refugees for resettlement and worked in partnership with community providers to ensure they were made to feel welcome in our state and had access to food, shelter, education, and job training. It’s why I stated in my most recent budget address, ‘America is a symbol of hope and opportunity. That’s what makes us strong, that’s what makes America great, and these are the values I will fight for every day.’”
Looking ahead
Salem worries about the future of the U.S. refugee program, along with other persecuted people who reach the U.S. by other means, like migrants crossing the border seeking asylum.
“There are so many people who are in the asylum process who deserve consideration,” Salem said. “To send people deliberately back to where they can be persecuted or killed is unconscionable.”
In a sense, refugees in the Refugee Admissions Program are representative of a much larger group of immigrants seeking safety through legal pathways who now find their future in jeopardy, Libal said.
“They claim protection because, in their own countries, their governments are unwilling or unable to protect them from persecution by criminal gangs or from being targeted for their gender or sexual identities," she said. "Yet their circumstances are similar to that of refugees who are resettled through organizations or community groups in the state.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said there’s another reason that supporting refugee programs is so critical: the role of refugee resettlement in national security. Take, as a striking example, the 1,660 Afghan refugees that the Trump administration recently cut off from entering the U.S.
“When an Afghan translator or guard decided to work for our country, he put a target on his back, and he put at risk his family, literally of death, because the Taliban don’t fool around — it’s not like they refuse to admit people to their country clubs. They play for keeps,” Blumenthal said.
But, Blumenthal said, such civilians are unlikely to take those kinds of risks to support American troops in the future if the U.S. doesn’t hold up its end of the deal by ensuring they are brought to safety. He warned of that possibility in a recent letter to the Trump administration: “Standing by those who stood with us is a matter of national interest and national honor.”
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who has been an outspoken critic of the Trump administration, said that such programs are essential to American identity and called the policy of suspending resettlement an abandonment of core principles.
“All of our communities are richer because of our immigrant history,” said Murphy, who added that his neighborhood in Hartford reflected that history. “I live right next to the Polish national home, down the street from the Italian North End, around the corner from the communities of immigrants from Latin America.”
‘We didn’t call it upon ourselves’
There’s one night in 1993 that Done remembers vividly. She was 15 then, asleep with her siblings, when her mother woke them up.
“All you could hear is — in my language — was ‘run!’” All around her, people were fleeing and she heard the blast of machine gun fire. Done and her siblings took the little food that they had along with their kerosene stove. She remembers the sound of her parents' voices in the darkness, wondering out loud where they could take their children to keep them out of harm’s way.
Today, when Done sees images of conflict zones around the world and people living in temporary shelters, they remind her of her days in the refugee camp in Benin as she waited for people an ocean away to decide her fate.
“They need some human being to think that they are human beings, too,” she said. “They didn’t call it upon themselves. We didn’t call it upon ourselves. It’s going to continue to happen as long as human beings don’t get along.”
Done rarely revisits the violent images from her own exodus from Nigeria.
“I’m sorry, I don’t want to cry. It’s hard to talk about it sometimes. It’s hard to see people dying in the street, one body part over here, one over there,” Done said. “All refugees are not thieves, all refugees are not killers. They're running for their lives.”
A previous version of this story stated that the Refugee Admissions Program hit a record low in 2021. It has been updated to clarify that the record low happened during fiscal year 2021, at the end of the first Trump presidency.
This story was originally published by the Connecticut Mirror.
