RUTLAND — A new group in Rutland is preparing to host one or more asylum seekers from the country’s southern border, following the blueprints of other regional organizations.
Bridge to Rutland, which incorporated as a nonprofit in June 2020, is waiting for one or more people from Central America to arrive in Rutland in the coming months.
Ellen Green, executive director of Bridge to Rutland, said she and others at Rutland’s Grace Congregational Church began reading about families who were separated at the border several years ago.
“Looking at scripture about welcoming the stranger in your midst and all of those kinds of things, we decided that we needed to do something, not just read about it,” Green said.
Membership soon expanded to include other local groups, such as the Rutland Area NAACP, Castleton Indivisible and Rutland Forward, which supported a slate of progressive candidates for local office.
Also participating are members of Rutland Welcomes, a group that worked to support a number of refugees who were scheduled to arrive in Rutland several years ago. Several families arrived, but most were held back by former President Donald Trump’s immigration ban.
Under pressure from immigration advocates, President Joe Biden is slowly loosening Title 42, a Trump-era policy that largely closed the United States-Mexico border during Covid-19, preventing many migrants from applying for asylum.
Green said she believes the first arrivals will come soon, but it’s hard to know exactly when. Bridge to Rutland is working with the Kino Border Initiative, which has centers in Arizona and Sonora, Mexico, and provides legal services and other support to migrants to help them apply for asylum.
“It’s a waiting game,” she said. “We’re hopeful (that it will be) in the next month, but I’ve been hopeful since February.”
Upon crossing the border into the United States, asylum seekers enter into a legal process, which can sometimes take several years, in which they aim to prove that they fled their country because of a reasonable fear.
“They have nothing when they come across, basically, except the clothes on their back,” Green said. “They are not allowed to work until they have reached a certain point in their asylum process.”
This process differs from that of refugees, who are granted their status before arriving in a new country. Refugees are allotted resources and are able to work when they arrive.
While community-based organizations often provide refugees social and language services, health care, housing and other support, similar organizations, such as Bridge to Rutland, provide financial support to asylum seekers while their cases are processed individually through the court system.
“That’s why we have so many groups working with us,” Green said.
Community organizations typically fundraise to support asylum seekers for up to a year until they’re given permission to work in the area, she said. Then, the organization steps back, providing as-needed social services or other support.
Bridge to Rutland, part of the Vermont-New Hampshire Asylum Support Network, is following a path first carved by the Brattleboro-based Community Asylum Seekers Project of Vermont, which is currently supporting 11 asylum seekers in the area, and has supported a total of 15.
It started when several community members, including Steve Crofter, volunteered at a migrant shelter at the border in 2016. There, they learned that people who have crossed the border can be released from detention centers if they’re sponsored by community members. Upon returning home, Crofter asked neighbors if they would be willing to gather resources to sponsor asylum seekers.
“They just started doing it as a group of volunteers, and then decided to incorporate and become a nonprofit,” said Kate Paarlberg-Kvam, director of Community Asylum Seekers Project of Vermont. “So now they have a network of local volunteers who step up to help asylum seekers with various daily tasks.”
She said the organization, which now has two full-time employees, has about 1,200 local people on its mailing list and works with about 200 active community members.
Bridge to Rutland gathers monthly over Zoom. Volunteers have already lined up host families, social workers and doctors, some bilingual, who have offered pro-bono services. Volunteers can also help in other ways, by driving the newcomers to the grocery store or appointments, for example.
“We will be meeting with all of the volunteers who have stepped forward so far to have a little training about what it means to offer hospitality and support to people who have survived a great deal of trauma,” Green said.
She expects fanfare at their arrival to be limited.
“Considering the amount of trauma these people have been through, we’re going to have a pretty quiet opening,” she said. “So I don’t think anybody’s even going to be aware of when they’re coming.”
In 2016, Rutland residents clashed when former mayor Chris Louras endeavored to bring 100 Syrian refugees to Rutland — an effort that was largely stopped by Trump’s immigration ban. Asked whether Green was concerned that the conflict might reemerge over the arrival of asylum seekers, Green said she thinks the political atmosphere of that time has passed.
The Syrian families who arrived are doing well, she said — in part because many members of the community came out to support them.
“We are not worried about anyone coming here feeling welcomed or safe,” Green said. “We will surround them with the care that they need, and if people have questions, they can call and ask.”
She added that asylum seekers are pursuing a legal process.
“By the time any asylum seeker comes to us, they will already be in the asylum process, at least a little bit. And so our job is to support them through the process,” she said. “That’s what this is all about.”
