Refugees awaiting family in Rochester face uncertainty, fear

The first thing Charlotte Gosso does after she wakes up in her small, dark apartment off Lake Avenue is make breakfast for her two sons — Ephraim, who is 10, and Guy, who is 22 and has a steady smile and a disability that will restrict him to his bed for the rest of his life.

That takes a little while. Then she might straighten up, or watch some TV. Then she prays.

Gosso came to Rochester in December from the Côte d’Ivoire via a refugee camp in Ghana; she was the first Ivoirian refugee here. Her prayers go to her country and her relatives there, the only ones she has.

There are only a handful of Ivoirians in Rochester, and it seems unlikely any more will be arriving.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday instituting a temporary ban on all refugee arrivals, fulfilling a campaign promise. Trump can point to terrorism and cite national security concerns as reasons for such actions. Federal law allows a president to bar entry to any immigrant “or any class” of immigrants if the president deems them “detrimental to the interests of the United States, and to “impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate,” according to the law.

MORE

Court grants temporary, emergency stay of Trump's immigration ban

NY cities wrestle with 'sanctuary city' status

Rochester's refugee population booms

Syrians at UR hope for a stop to bloodshed

Map reveals the many languages of Rochester

Most refugees in 2016 came to the U.S. from countries that are at war or under the control of repressive governments.

Trump’s order puts the refugee agency in Rochester into an uneasy holding pattern.

Ellen Smith, head of the Rochester chapter of No One Left Behind that works with resettlement agencies in Rochester, is outraged at the policy.

“We have a guy who’s due into JFK tomorrow morning and we know he’s going to be detained,” said Smith, whose group helps resettlement agencies provide furnished apartments, financial support and employment assistance to Afghan and Iraqi families.

Typically, the group works with people who have already secured special immigrant visas, and who have worked with the U.S. military as interpreters or in other support capacities. “And his brother is already here in Rochester.”

There is no indication that people who are here already will have their status changed, but nearly every new arrival has stories of friends or family in their home country who hoped to join them.

Gosso thinks of a woman she knew in the refugee camp in Ghana. It would take Gosso up to three days to travel to Accra, the capital, for bureaucratic matters, and there was no one to watch Guy while she was gone. The woman would help her, and give her some rice when she needed it to feed her sons.

The woman and her husband would like to come to the United States, and Gosso would welcome them. She speaks only French and is confined to her small apartment unless someone can help her with Guy.

Lisa Hoyt, director of the Catholic Family Center’s refugee, immigration & language services department, described another case. A mother and seven children were supposed to arrive in Rochester this past Tuesday. The family is Somali, but living in a refugee camp in Kenya.

The oldest of the children is 19. The youngest is 2. Their new life here is waiting. But someone in the group got sick, postponing their travel.

“Think about what’s happened,” she said. “These people literally could have missed this opportunity ... through no fault of their own.”

CFC is the official resettlement agency for Rochester. In recent days, it has been slammed with phone calls and visits from people worried about loved ones left behind, or uncertain about their own futures here in the United States.

Soe Win came from Burma in 2007 after spending five years in a refugee camp. Her cousin was supposed to arrive next month, but that now seems unlikely to happen.

“When you come here, you come with a dream — the American dream,” Win said. “Can you imagine that being destroyed?”

CFC’s resettlement office has 36 staffers, many of whom, like Win, are refugees themselves. And while it provides other services — a total of 19 programs dealing with various aspects of immigration — the effects of a months-long shutdown can be devastating. The U.S. suspended refugee admissions after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and Hoyt said the Rochester resettlement office dwindled to a staff of two within a few months.

New York resettled 5,026 refugees in 2015-16, the third-highest total of any state. Numbers were up as former President Barack Obama pushed to increase the number of those admitted from 75,000 to 85,000, and set a goal of 110,000 in fiscal 2017. Some accounts are that 25,000 refugees have arrived since Oct. 1. Trump wants to limit that to 50,000 for the year.

“This is a sick, inhumane policy,” said Smith, who could barely contain her outrage and dismay over the Trump policy that will keep vetted immigrants out of the country. “These men have stood by this country and our soldiers and we are doing this to them. I just don’t understand it.”

Rochester has been particularly busy. The city welcomed 1,176 refugees in 2016, a 56 percent increase from the year before, and was preparing for an even busier 2017.

Since Jan. 1, CFC has welcomed 50 people from Afghanistan, Syria, Cuba and elsewhere. For the month ahead, the office had been expecting 38 refugees, with countries of origin including Somalia, Bhutan, Cuba, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The executive action was not unexpected, though Hoyt said many in the field were optimistic that Trump’s order might be more limited.

“We were all trying to push as many through, because we were afraid this could happen,” Hoyt said.

The biggest groups of refugees this year were expected to be Somali, Syrian and Congolese. The latter group stands a better chance of coming in, said a clearly exasperated Hoyt, “because they are not Muslim.”

Tek Acharya of Bhutan came to the United States in 2011 after 18 years in a refugee camp. He got his citizenship earlier this year, just in time for the November election; he now stands to lose his job with CFC if refugee arrivals slow as predicted.

“We have families, bills, all that, so I am concerned,” he said. “But we will be fine. The families awaiting reunification are the ones I’m really most concerned about.”

BDSHARP@Gannett.com

JMURPHY7@Gannett.com

MCDERMOT@Gannett.com

Includes reporting by the USA TODAY Network.

Refugee arrivals in Rochester

The list below shows the nation of origin for the five largest groups of refugees out of the total 4,183 who have arrived in Rochester from Jan. 1, 2012, through Thursday. There were no anticipated arrivals on Friday. Overall, more than 30 countries are represented. To be admitted, refugees first must meet certain criteria, then undergo interviews and security screenings/background checks involving the Department of Homeland Security, Department of State, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, Customs and Border Patrol, various other law enforcement and intelligence agencies, be fingerprinted, photographed and pass medical screenings. Less than 1 percent of the global refugee population clears the first step of the process.

•Bhutan: 1,360

•Somalia: 591

•Cuba: 565

•Burma: 455

•Iraq: 426

Source: Refugee, Immigration & Language Services Department, Catholic Family Center