U.S. AIR FORCE
More than 600 Afghan citizens fleeing Taliban aboard U.S. Air Force C-17 on Aug. 15.
A New Haven agency on the front lines of resettling Afghan refugees came to East Rock neighbors with a wish list for help.
Ann O’Brien, director of community engagement at Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services (IRIS), put out the call Monday night during an appearance at the virtual monthly meeting of the East Rock Community Management Team (CMT).
Goatville-based IRIS, a nationally recognized leader in resettling refugees, is ramping up to welcome, shelter, and counsel upwards of 100 refugees fleeing the chaos in Afghan.
That’s not counting 85 ongoing clients, mostly mothers with children, who in recent months went back to Afghanistan for funerals or other family occasions before the chaotic evacuation. They are now stuck there and needing IRIS help to return to Connecticut.
Normally IRIS receives at minimum five days’ notice to expect a new family. Then, “on Aug. 4, IRIS was put on 24 hours’ notice to expect families from Afghanistan,” O’Brien reported to the 30 participants in the CMT meeting.
That’s unprecedented short notice, O’Brien said.
Another first for the agency is that is receiving refugees directly from a conflict zone.
“The reason for the short notice is that they filled flights as fast as possible, bringing them [the refugee Special Immigrant Visa holders] to Dulles then to Fort Lee, and then figuring from Fort Lee the best place to settle” them, O’Brien said.
IRIS has risen to the occasion.
“In the past 18 days we received four families of 32 people so far, and we expect to be receiving many more, including in other categories” other than the SIV program, O’Brien reported.
Eighty-five current IRIS families, “mostly mothers with children who went back to Afghanistan to visit family, are now trapped,” O’Brien added. “IRIS staff are now helping them with forms, to get those families on evacuation flights and helping to file” documentation.
“What you’ve been seeing in the news is exactly what our Afghans and neighbors are telling us. Every bit as bad. One crisis to get to the Kabul airport, but to be there days on end is becoming a crisis by itself,” O’Brien told the CMT. “We’re hoping they’re going to identify other pick-up points in Afghanistan other than Kabul, because some of our people are there, and we’re working with the State Department.”
The good news, said O’Brien, is that IRIS has also been overwhelmed with suggestions and possibilities for temporary or permanent housing.
“Our challenge is when a family gets here,” O’Brien said, “we can’t have an apartment set up within 24 hours. So we’re incurring motel expenses.”
Space at IRIS’s 235 Nicoll St. headquarters is tight, O’Brien reported, with not enough room for one-on-one meetings and other gatherings for the influx of new asylum seekers. The library and hospital have offered rooms and meeting space.
New Haven Free Public Library Public Service Administrator Gina Bingham, who was attending the meeting, asked how else New Haveners might help beyond those ideas and cash and lodging.
O’Brien noted that 70 percent of the refugee families arriving are expected to be women with children under 18. She asked for winter clothes and school prep backpacks, as well as help with storage.
Other needs include individuals who might volunteer to help ramp up in-school tutoring when the refugee children begin school in September.
She asked people to go to the IRIS site to sign up to volunteer.
“Most people are coming with just one bag,” she said. “No one saw this coming.”