Welcome to The Atrómitos Way Podcast, where we candidly discuss the everyday challenges facing safety net health and human service providers, government agencies, philanthropies, and advocates. Our podcast will offer practical, easy-to-implement solutions to long-standing and emerging problems and highlight innovative ideas from fearless thought leaders nationwide.
#046: The Impact of Federal Policy and Funding Changes on Refugee and Immigrant Communities
•Atrómitos, LLC•Episode 46
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Since January of 2025 organizations like Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services (IRIS) have faced numerous legal and financial challenges in the wake of recent federal policy changes. Atrómitos Communications Director, Monette Goodrich, and IRIS Executive Director, Maggie Mitchell Salem, discuss the origins of the organization, the support it provides refugees integrating into their new homes, and how ordinary people in communities across Connecticut can help secure the future of organizations like IRIS. Monette and Maggie shed light on the critical first 90 days after refugees arrive in the United States, the impact of a $4 million federal funding cut on IRIS staff and the people they serve, and the vital role individuals play in advocating for refugee and immigrant rights with local, state and federal elected officials.
Maggie Mitchell Salem joined IRIS as Executive Director in January 2024. Throughout her 30-year career, Maggie has managed diverse teams focused on civic education, intercultural dialogue, social and political rights, and forced displacement. Given the fewer number of refugees allowed into the country due to the recent federal immigration ban, Maggie has focused on organizational structure, systems, and new initiatives that create a solid foundation for the organization’s continued growth.
Monette Goodrich, the new Atrómitos Communications Director, has decades of strategic communications, media relations and management experience in the governmental, non-profit and philanthropic sectors.
Key takeaways
The Past: For more than four decades the federal resettlement program funded organizations like IRIS to provide newly arrived refugees with critical and comprehensive integration services from basic living necessities and employment assistance, to healthcare and mental wellness support, and so much more.
The Present: Recent presidential executive orders including the immigrant ban, funding freezes and pauses, and stop work orders have drastically decreased the number of refugees allowed to immigrate into the U.S. and cut funding for resettlement agencies across the nation. After losing federal grant dollars, which make up a quarter of its annual budget, IRIS closed offices in New Haven and Hartford, restructured its services and cut its staff by more than half.
The Future: While national organizations have challenged these policy changes in federal courts, judicial rulings take time. During this interim period of legal and financial uncertainty IRIS relies on state-level assistance and fundraising efforts, such as the Run with Refugees, to keep its doors open and continue providing important services to refugees, many of who are fleeing extreme poverty, political violence and war in their origin countries. Maggie urges listeners, no matter where they live, to reach out to their elected representatives and advocate for refugees, and support organizations like IRIS in their state.
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This podcast is a production of Atrómitos, a woman-owned boutique consulting firm creating a better way for our health and human services provider clients to achieve their goals by strengthening internal operations, enhancing financial stability and evaluating public policies.
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In addition to our podcast, we've developed additional resources to improve your understanding of both long-standing and emerging issues important to leaders in the health and human service provider, government and philanthropic sectors.
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Narrator
Welcome to the Adromed Display Podcast, where we candidly discuss the everyday challenges facing health and human service providers, government agencies, philanthropies, and advocates. Our podcasts offer practical, easy-to-implement solutions to both long-standing and emerging problems, and highlight innovative ideas from fearless thought leaders across the country. Today's episode explores the impact of reduced federal grant funding on one Connecticut-based human service provider that is shuttering its doors. New autonomous communications director Mike Goodrich, who has decades of communications experience in the governmental, nonprofit, and nonprofit sectors, will speak with Maggie Mitchell Sale, Executive Director of IRIS, or Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services, about how she and her organization have navigated rapid federal policy changes and continue to provide services. Maggie, who joined IRIS in 2024, has nearly 30 years of experience in civic education, intercultural dialogue, social and political rights, and forced displacement.
SPEAKER_02
Hi, welcome to the Atramatos Way podcast. I'm Monette Goodrich, the new communications director. And I'm here with Maggie Mitchell-Salem, who is the Executive Director of IRIS, otherwise known as the Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services, based out of Connecticut. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Before coming to Connecticut, it looked like you had a very um interesting career.
SPEAKER_01
And I would say even after getting to Connecticut, just a continuation of more of the same thanks a lot, Monette. It's so great to be here. I uh have had uh the good fortune to see a lot of the world, uh, not nearly enough of it, and to spend time with um in interesting places with really incredible people. And um before coming to Iris, I was in Tunisia for three years running the National Democratic Institute's uh democratic governance programs there and supporting our team in Libya. So yeah, and then came to Connecticut to work on an issue that's close to my heart. My grandparents on both sides were immigrants themselves from Poland and from Scotland, very different places in a very different time. And, you know, it's um for sure challenging now, but also every day I wake up with more resolve to keep doing what we're doing.
SPEAKER_02
So, which was your favorite place around the world? Or can you pick one?
SPEAKER_01
I really loved living in Syria. And when I lived in Syria, it was um in the 1990s, so it was long before everything that happened. And the last time I visited was actually December of 2010. So a couple of months before the civil unrest that led to a civil war. And completely different now, I'm sure. It's very different now, but they have a chance to to rebuild, a chance for a new path, which is really promising.
SPEAKER_02
Well, on that high note, tell us about Iris. Um, how did it start? What do you guys do?
SPEAKER_01
Sure. So so Iris started in a church basement off Wooster Square in the center of New Haven, and it started the way lots of nonprofits do to try to help underserved communities, but particularly immigrants. And then it really took off in 1982 when it became one of dozens of resettlement agencies across the U.S. that started because of the 1980 Refugee Act that President Carter signed and that had overwhelmingly bipartisan support. I mean, imagine all 100 members of the Senate voted for it. And it set up the system that has now been stopped by the Trump administration. And we were one of, you know, 200 agencies working under 10 national large agencies supporting the resettlement of refugees. And over time, and especially until January 2025, other immigrants, such as humanitarian parolees and asylum seekers and other statuses. And so, you know, we we went from, you know, initially resettling a very small number to resettling, you know, several hundred, actually close to a thousand in 2024.
SPEAKER_02
So tell us about the different statuses before we get into kind of how your life changed in January of 2024. You mentioned parole. I think when most people hear that word, they think of prison. So that's not what we're talking about, right?
SPEAKER_01
No, it's very different. So humanitarian parole is a way that the US at the border can recognize that there are individuals. Normally it's based on individuals who have circumstances that they outline to the customs and border patrol agent. And that agent has the potential discretion, depending on the administration, to allow that person into the country temporarily on humanitarian parole because the situation where they come from is so dire that they need safety. President Biden, and not for the first time, expanded that to entire populations, to Afghans. Think of August 2021 in the scenes that we all saw of people desperately fleeing, to Ukrainians. There are over 200,000 Ukrainians in the US right now who are here on humanitarian parole. There are 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, and those four nationalities have been notified that their parole is ending on April 24th and that they either self-deport or could potentially face removal. So it's a temporary status that the you know president and you know the um secretary of uh the Department of Homeland Security have discretion over how they can use that. Um, and this administration is clearly um not as comfortable using it to support large numbers of people who are fleeing really truly desperate situations.
SPEAKER_02
So that's a good segue into kind of what happened in January. Yeah. You talked about kind of, I guess some news organizations are calling it an immigrant ban. Then on top of that, uh there was a uh President Trump through an executive order, ordered a three-month review of all federal funding, and so that was paused. And then the State Department suspended all funding related to refugee organizations, and then a couple days later, the Office of Management and Budget uh called for an immediate freeze on all grants. So tell us how that all impacted your organization. That was a week that felt like six months, honestly. Were you expecting this quick of a change?
SPEAKER_01
No, the speed and the scope, the scale, all of it was off the charts from what we knew there were going to be significant changes. We did not, and we knew that they were going to come faster. We did not see a tsunami coming, which is what this was and continues to be. So that week, when the refugee admissions program stopped on inauguration day, January 20th, that meant that refugees were no longer able to get to the U.S. We did receive uh a family of Afghan allies. These are special immigrant visa holders, um, individuals and their families who supported U.S. forces uh in Afghanistan. And so we got that last family on the 23rd. And then on the 24th of January, three o'clock in the afternoon, the national resettlement agencies, because we don't have direct contracts with the State Department, they either flow through the 10, one of the 10 national agencies, our national agency, they're called VOLAGs, voluntary agencies. Ours is Church World Service, or it comes through the state of Connecticut. And we received word from our National Church World Service at three in the afternoon on Friday, the 24th, that the reception and placement contract, so this is the contract through which we offer the most labor and financially intensive services to refugees, not humanitarian parolees, only for refugees, and it's for a 90-day period because within 90 days they are supposed to become self-sufficient, and that is our job to help them become self-sufficient.
SPEAKER_02
That is not a long period of time.
SPEAKER_01
I have four kids. Three of the four were not self-sufficient 90 days after graduating from high school, and a couple of them are still on my phone plan. So I don't know. It seems absurd, but that's the system we work within. And it's also a public-private partnership. So the federal funding is never enough. There's that's not much of a shocker. But actually, in our case, it's designed to never be enough because they the goal of the program was that local communities and states would be part of the support network, both financially and in terms of volunteers for resettlement. So there's never a surprise. States are all very well aware of what is happening in terms of this federal program. So we received that stop work order and we had clients. Uh, we have received 210 clients since October 1, 2024, the start of the federal fiscal year. And I would say approximately half were still in that 90-day period when we got the stop work order. Then within an hour, we heard from the agency administering welcome corps that that program also received a stop work order. And that entire team was laid off at six o'clock. The staffing um implications for the refugee-facing program were less immediate, in part because it is a very directly client-facing program. So we were trying to figure out how we were going to continue without this funding and still provide services.
SPEAKER_02
So I do have a question though. What happened to those people in the mid-90 days?
SPEAKER_01
We're still helping them. You can give us a stop work order, and I guess if we were work building a building, we would stop working. We're working with human beings. We've had to downsize our staffing. We have shuttered an office that we have had for 20 years and are moving to a more hybrid work style. Um, we do have office space in New Haven still, but you know, we're having to really ask tough questions about what is a priority. And the priority is always in serving the people that are core to our mission. So that's what we're trying to do.
SPEAKER_02
So tell me more about the well, what kind of exactly what we do, you know, to for a family that comes in with the 90 days. What, you know, I I assume many of them don't know English, are not familiar. No, they don't. So what like what happens?
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, um, that's a really great question. So let me just also back up. So they're on the plane, they're flying to the U.S., they've gone through the entire process, a process in which they are some of the most vetted people you can imagine in the world. Even the Afghan allies, allies that served with U.S. forces get re-vetted in order to get into the United States. As you might imagine, getting onto a US base in Afghanistan, you don't just show up, wave, and say, I'd like a job. You know, there's a process. And then they go through another process to come to the U.S. So, you know, they're highly scrutinized vetted individuals. So they get on a plane and their airfare is not free. They have travel loans. The International Organization of Migration, the organization that also received a stop work order on January 24th, they facilitate the travel and coordinate the travel loans. We have staff still paying back travel loans for them and their families from 2016. So nothing is free. They land, they're brought to our office by IOM, International Organization of Migration, and we take over. And sometimes they're arriving at 10 o'clock at night. We have staff who will be there at the office to receive them or meet them at another address at the housing that we've set up. What we have available to them when they arrive at their new home is a hot meal from that is of their country of origin. So we have to work with local restaurants, with local community members in order to have that meal available to that family when they arrive. They'll have basic, really basic setup beds, sheets, a sofa, you know, um, whatever you might need in the kitchen, but like really, really, you know, pots, pans, and utensils. And then they're coming to the office and meeting with a case management, um, someone from our case management team, uh, someone from our health team, someone from our employment team, our education team, and this coordinated team is helping them get kids in school, um, helping them get the very limited refugee cash assistance that they receive from the federal government through the state, helping find that job. And as you mentioned, most of the clients that we are receiving now do not have any English language skills. So that barrier to even getting a job at Dunkin' Donuts is pretty high. So we've set up vocational English classes to just help with some familiarity, some basic rudimentary English that would be useful in a workplace. And then there's also you're coming from, let's say, the Congo, or you're Rohingya from Myanmar, or you're coming from Sudan, Syria, and you have been displaced for a long time. You may not have worked in a workplace like the American workplace before. And so we're also offering support to the employers so that if there's any cultural issues that we can help navigate with them, we do that. So it's kind of a full service operation.
SPEAKER_02
What about the trauma? Because a lot of these people have experienced like life-changing trauma.
SPEAKER_01
We have so many terrific partners in the community. We work very closely with the L University, which has a refugee and asylum health program. We work with um different mental health professionals in different capacities, both in New Haven and Hartford. We had started resettling in New London before everything was shut down. New London is in further east in Connecticut. And of course, like most people who have insurance, mental health is not well covered. We struggle to offer enough support to help folks navigate what will be long-term mental health challenges that they're going to have, and especially the kids. And so what we tend to focus on, because sometimes it's hard for the adults and it's hard for us to reach the adults in that way, it takes a little time. But with the kids, we in our education program, we have, for example, a middle and high school youth mentorship program and leadership, so that the kids get some extra attention. Um, they both feel, you know, having been dropped into an American public school, which is hard enough if you're American. And even harder if you're coming in and you don't have much, if any, English language skills and you're from somewhere else. And it's like literally landing on another planet in another world. We want them to feel connected, that they have people that they can rely on, and that they can build a sense of community to one another, even if they're from different countries. So those are some of the ways that we try to address that. And for women, many of the women are coming from much more conservative, socially conservative cultures and religiously conservative. And so we try to have like sewing or family literacy where the women are able to come together and feel build relationships with us, our team, our volunteers, and then maybe open up a little bit. And if we can help them, we try to help navigate challenges. Some of them may face domestic violence issues that you know are not going to be readily apparent and that take trust and time for people to open up about.
SPEAKER_02
So, out of all those services, are you still able to provide that from everybody now that your budget has been cut or the federal grants that have been canceled totaling what, four million dollars? Like you talked about you've had to prioritize. That's a lot of money. So, what how how have you done that?
SPEAKER_01
The answer is no. I mean, on a good day, we weren't able to do everything for everything that everyone needed. And it's always hard to draw a line. Now we are we set up a system where because we've had to cut back on our case management team, all of our departments have been reduced. So there's a system where clients can text, they can explain or leave a voice message, and we can translate those. We have staff still who speak many languages. We're triaging their needs. So um we'll we're, you know, and then there's a round robin approach to case management so that different staff members are taking on um client needs, but it's taking a little more time. We are working out now that we're leaving our New Haven office, which did not always require an appointment to see a case manager. Now appointments are required, and we're working out new space in New Haven and also in Hartford where we can do those in-person meetings. And so it's a work in progress. We're adapting and evolving. I want to say, I think we've gone from doing it every day to doing it every week. So the pace is becoming a little more routine, but it's always a matter of priorities. What are we, you know, we we we have been just we're overwhelmingly thankful for the amount of community support, both in terms of volunteers and donors that we've received, but we we have to ration, and and that's really hard. Um, and so it's just it's a matter of kind of a weekly check-in. What do we need to be doing? What grants are still in place that we can still access, federal grants, and then trying to also leave time for how are we going to adapt longer term?
SPEAKER_02
I would imagine that a lot of your staff, these are kind of emotionally charged jobs. So, what is the impact just on your staff? Because this was extremely sudden and they obviously are very dedicated or they wouldn't be doing this for a living. So, how has it kind of impacted your staff? It's been really, really hard.
SPEAKER_01
And it's further it's made even harder by the fact that many staff are themselves refugees and immigrants. Um and so we have Ukrainian humanitarian parolees, Afghan allies, you know, we have staff who are from uh Sierra Leone, from I'm trying to think of some of the other countries that we still have staff from Syria. So they many of them were anticipating uh having family members join, and that has now become very complicated. If not impossible, if a travel ban that seems to be indefinitely paused, but I I just I cannot raise my hopes that if that does come into effect, that will mean that they're they can't even have you know have their family visit, who might not even want to leave the country right now, because there is so much uncertainty about what causes you to be permanently exiled from the US. So, you know, just on their own personal circumstances, many staff are in a very, very difficult position. And then, yes, you add to it that we are also facing some of the same fears and concerns from our clients. You know, refugees who came here seeking safety who no longer feel safe. You know, humanitarian parolees from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela are losing their status in you know, 23 days. And none of those countries are more stable or secure to return home to. They had jobs, they were contributing. You know, it everything seems so backwards. And the fear that our our clients feel, our staff definitely feels both on their behalf, because they have empathy, and empathy is a good thing, and because they themselves may be afraid. So, yeah, it's been it's been really hard. And then they're watching colleagues lose their jobs, it's which is a world of pain. It is very hard.
SPEAKER_02
You mentioned April 24th. Can you give us, I know there's several lawsuits, kind of, you know, there's so much going on, there's so many executive orders, and it's kind of hard to keep track. So if you couldn't start off by the um Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington State, kind of what I know there was a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the immigrant ban. So if you can give us an update on what where that is, and then we can move on to other things.
SPEAKER_01
So, what I can tell you overall is that there have been, I I want to say a dozen or more, probably more, cases or hearings, not just individual cases, in which the administration has been told time and time again that they need to either stop what they're doing, pause what they're doing, or okay, you can not have the US refugee admissions program going forward in the way that it was, but you need to clear out the backlog of, depending on which news report you look at, either 20,000 cases that were most travel ready in January, or the full 100,000 that have been vetted are cleared and are ready to travel. So those are big numbers. On those cases, we have not seen any action by the administration, though in um Placido versus Trump, the case that Church World Service is one of the plaintiffs to, our national agency, because of that case, resettlement agencies are being reimbursed for expenses going back to the start of the federal fiscal year, which is October 1. We are finally receiving reimbursements from September of 2024. So that's one case. In other cases, you have seen halt to, for example, the case that um that I think you're mentioning is the one most recently decided about Venezuelans, and that Venezuelan TPS cannot be abruptly ended using the rationale that the administration used, which I believe was described as racist. Um that there were broad generalizations made about Venezuelans and their threat to American national security that seemed not appropriate and in fact dangerous. And so it's unclear what is going to happen in that case, but it's this over there is an overlay of different cases about different issues, whether broadly US government funding to different departments or specifically on immigration status, on the funding of the resettlement work that was already done as of January 20th or January 24th, depending on which date you're looking at, stopping the resettlement process or the stop work orders. And then the various impacts on different nationalities and statuses. What I can say across the board is that I don't think there's a case that the administration has won. They have won the ability going forward to do what they want, but not to stop and then not reimburse or allow entry, grant entry to those that were supposed to arrive in the country under the old system. So that's the state of play.
SPEAKER_02
So do you anticipate that they'll you'll ever go back to before January 2024? Like what is your outlook kind of for the future?
SPEAKER_01
So it's not just my outlook, it's what the administration has signaled in Placido versus Trump that makes clear that they have a new resettlement system in mind. So right now, 10 national agencies with affiliates and some wholly owned offices of the national agencies implementing across the country, plus Welcome Core. They're looking at one resettlement agency based on their file, late their filings last month in Placeito. One agency, it's unclear how they're going to manage nationwide resettlement through one national. It's unclear who they're going to use. They are currently interviewing, the State Department is interviewing Afrikaners in South Africa for potential resettlement. And what I understand is that the State Department approached three resettlement agencies to ask if they would help resettle white Afrikaans. And it's unclear if any have said yes.
SPEAKER_02
Do you think that is due to Elon Musk having a prominent role in the administration?
SPEAKER_01
It's also David Sachs, who has a who is also South African and has a significant role on AI and technology. Yes, I think so. There's also, I think within the MAGA movement, an affinity for the Afrikaners. And so, and the misinformation about the recent changes to land titling uh or the state's ability to reclaim private land in South Africa is driving this. I mean, there's there is so much, so much of the current policies in the immigration space are fueled by myths and disinformation. And I think the South Africa approach is just one of many.
SPEAKER_02
So have you in this interim period, because basically the rug was just pulled out from underneath you, um, have you gotten any assistance from the state or other kinds of how are you keeping the doors open, even if you've had to, you know, streamline?
SPEAKER_01
So, you know, we're really blessed. We're so fortunate to be in Connecticut. The governor, the legislature, the congressional delegation, they're just, you know, a majority, a very clear majority, are very strongly in favor of, you know, having a diverse state, having being a diverse nation, and that we are, you know, the governors as it were a nation of immigrants. You know, that it just seems natural. This is our superpower. So we're really lucky that way. The state, you know, the state funding will never be able to replace federal funding. And, you know, without people coming in, you know, you could wisely say, well, you don't need the same kind of funding. That is very true. The state has made some emergency allocations of funds to IRIS and to the two other smaller resettlement agencies in the state. The governor is headlining a um a fundraising reception, his idea that he's going to have in June for the three agencies. Um, he'll be inviting some of his friends. You know, we have strong support from Senator Chris Murphy, Senator Richard Blumenthal, Congresswoman Rosa Delora, who's the ranking minority member in the uh House Appropriations Committee. You know, we um have fantastic uh support uh from you know state representatives and senators as well. And the community support is what's going to get us through, both in the form of volunteers who are forming teams in order to help supplement our limited staffing, especially as we're moving out of our office and we're rebasing and we just need support, we need help. And then also donations. The run for refugees, it's a great example of how a community comes together. Iris is so much bigger than any executive director or even the entire staff. Iris is the run for refugees, brings home that iris is community, it's all about community, and that we cannot be here without the support of community members. And the run in February, so the run for refugees, it's our annual fundraiser. We don't do rubber chicken dinners, we do runs in the snow, literally, in February on Super Bowl Sunday. And it this year it felt like a community group hug. 2,800 people showed up out of 3,200 who had registered. Our biggest year, actually over 3,200 registered, but there was a big snowstorm on the Saturday night. And so we weren't even sure until about six in the morning that the city was going to be able to clear the streets enough for us to run. And they did. The I've got to credit just uh Mayor Justin Elliker in New Haven and the um Department of Public Works in New Haven. Uh, they were out there in force and they made the streets clear. And everyone turned up and just the joy and the it was like everyone needed on February 9th to feel a sense of that community of others who care and feel the same way. And we doubled our normal normal fundraising. It was, but really my takeaway from it wasn't about the money, it was about that sense. And so many people that I've talked to since then, and people have shared online that they felt that group hug. It it's such a weird thing to say, but that's iris.
SPEAKER_02
We could all use a hug just about now. As a nation.
SPEAKER_01
We do need a hug. So, you know, we've we've just been incredibly fortunate that a lot of people have come forward and said, What do you need? And we're here for you. Going forward, we have plans. Like we are we cannot constantly be in the state of decline. We need to pivot, turn, and say, okay, dust ourselves off, and here we are. This is who we are. And in order to survive this, and to do things we've always wanted to do, like not just get subsistence jobs for our clients, but help integrate them into workforce training programs, giving them that little help with English, job readiness, the extra help they need to get into those programs, which given the decline in immigration that is clear, there are going to be even harder workforce challenges going forward because our population is aging. We're not replacing our current population, so we're going to go into population decline without immigration. And so there's a lot of challenges bubbling under the surface. And we want to say, great, we have people who are underutilized. Let us help you by helping them.
SPEAKER_02
So you're kind of restructuring by force.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. Sometimes it's a good thing, you know. You realize, okay, this is a project we've wanted to take on. We haven't wanted to take it on by being set on fire. Right. Uh nobody wants that. But we have long wanted to do better than getting folks entry-level jobs. You know, immigrants come with such incredible skills, many of them. You know, uh, carpenters, engineers, we've got doctors and nurses who, yeah, the accreditation, you know, challenge is very steep, but there are all kinds of workarounds to that, to take talent and actually deploy it the way it should be, which is in the field that they want to be in and where we have critical shortages. I call this who's going to take care of grandma? Because a third of the healthcare sector is immigrant labor.
SPEAKER_02
My other question is do you, you know, we've all seen that video of the Tufts University graduate student approached by the ICE officials. Do you give any counsel and advice to immigrants that are here that are afraid they are going to be deported kind of off the street?
SPEAKER_01
So we are um counseling. Um so we've been holding know your rights sessions um since November. Uh, we in uh in coordination with many local groups, church groups, synagogues, you know, community groups to help immigrants understand what their rights are. Um, if I knocks at their door, help schools understand what they do since uh, especially in January when it became clear that the administration was rolling back, that um the rule that they had in place previously, uh, that they would not be going into courthouses and places of worship and health clinics and hospitals. Um, and so we were also helping all of those providers understand what you do if ice comes to your door. Now, given even greater uncertainty about every status except American citizens, and there I would put an asterisk, because who knows? We're saying that you should have some form of your identification on you. And even American citizens who are worried that they're going to be profiled should carry documentation of some kind with them that proves their immigration status, or at the very least, their identity.
SPEAKER_02
Sobering thoughts, sobering times. So we want to always end on a high note. You talked about restructuring. Are you going to be doing more fundraising? And also kind of how can the average person help? This podcast is nationwide. So if you can give us ideas on how the average person in Arkansas to Washington to Florida, who's got a similar organization as yours, how the average person who sometimes, myself included, feel powerless to do anything?
SPEAKER_01
Well, never feel powerless. Um, I came from Tunisia to Connecticut, where I was supporting democratic governance programs in a country that was backsliding into autocracy, but had a much more nascent democratic tradition and institutions. There are so many ways that people can, as citizens, where you citizens and residents, even non-citizens, we are all covered by the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. There's no carve-outs for immigrants. And there have been a number of court cases in the past that make this clear. It is a constitution written for everyone. So that's to me, democracy is the brightest light of all. It's just sometimes that the light gets a little dim and we as citizens need to dust it off and make it grow brighter again. That's our role. And then in terms of specifically with Iris, you know, there are people across the nation that might already know about Iris because of our work with Welcome Core and helping revive community sponsorship of refugees. So if you're in a place where your community has helped sponsor refugees and you're really upset right now, definitely write to your congressman, um, your congressional delegation, and and take issue with what's happening. You have a voice, and and that's your voice always matters, and especially now. And then you if you know of us, or even if you don't, um, go to irisct.org, our website, and you'll find lots of great information, including know your rights, including ways to get involved. Um, if you're near us, volunteering is easier. If you're not, there are ways that you can donate, or you can maybe we can help connect you with a local community sponsor group that is becoming really engaged in trying to support the work of refugee resettlement and being open to immigrants. So lots of great ways. Um, and our our volunteers are amazing. What can be done on the state level? On the state level, you know, there is no reason, especially now, not to reach out to your governor, to your elected representatives, state representatives, and let them know how you feel about the policies that are happening now, about immigrants being threatened, about freedom of speech being not so free. It's not about what people are saying. It's that we have the right to express viewpoints, even viewpoints that some may have trouble with. But the biggest problem is not the viewpoint, it's not being able to speak. It's a it's of the First Amendment for a reason, because this country was founded on the ability to protest and to think freely and to speak freely. And so, you know, if anything in the democratic spectrum or in the refugee resettlement and immigrant facing the fact that immigrants feel so fearful now, and is that really America? Let your elected representatives know what you think, whatever you think, because that's why they're there.
SPEAKER_02
I think that's great advice for all of us. And with that, I would really like to thank Maggie for taking the time out of her, I'm sure, very busy days these days to uh speak with us and to, you know, really show the impact of one executive order can have a huge impact down on an organization in your community. So, with that, we will sign off. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_01
Thank you for reaching out to me. I appreciate this opportunity always to talk about our work and why it matters.
Narrator
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Adromatus Way. This podcast is a production of Adromatus, a boutique consulting firm that creates a better way for our health and human service safety net clients to achieve their goals by strengthening internal operations, enhancing financial stability, and evaluating public policies. Please follow the show and leave a review. You can find previous episodes and more content on our website, Adramatus Consulting.com slash Adromatus Dash Way. That is A-T R O M I T O S. We'll see you next time.
