Last April, Republican governors from border states Texas and Arizona began sending busloads of immigrants to cities including New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., making the argument that the rest of the country should help them deal with the flood of new immigrants crossing the border into their states.
These asylum seekers, who had been cleared to legally remain in the U.S. pending their asylum hearings, were often deliberately misinformed or uninformed about what to expect after they arrived in the cities they were bused to. Immigrant rights advocates criticized these actions as politically motivated stunts where migrants were used and abused as props.
Washington, D.C. has received some 6,300 migrants since April, with no advance government plan in place to support them or arrange for transportation to cities where they have family members. So many volunteers stepped up to welcome them, provide housing and other material support while they are in D.C. and assist in coordinating transportation on the next leg of their journey.
Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Dr. Kate Sugarman, a family physician at a D.C. health clinic who has been volunteering since April. She’s active with a national group called Doctors for Camp Closures. Here she explains how her local volunteer group has been assisting asylum seekers and what she would like to see happen when refugees apply for asylum.
[Web editor’s note: The audio version of this interview has been edited for broadcast time constraints and may differ from this transcript.]
KATE SUGARMAN: In the beginning we were trying to get people who spoke French and Portuguese; there were people from places from, I think, Congo and Angola, where those languages were spoken. There was a sprinkling of people from Central America. The past few months it seems like predominantly from Venezuela, a little bit from Nicaragua.
Sometimes I’m a greeter. If we get advance notices that buses are coming I’ll work with them as we figure out their next step, but also as a physician I’ve been able to help with some medical needs. Or delivering food or delivering winter coats. You know, people started coming in April and cold weather wasn’t an issue, but we’re rapidly preparing now to collect coats and clothing for cold weather.
MELINDA TUHUS: I’m really curious. With this number of people, where are they staying and what do they do?
KATE SUGARMAN: We work with them to figure out a plan. If they have friends or family in another city, then we help them to get transportation to help them unify with people in another city. But some 10-20 percent of the people who come don’t have friends or family in other parts of the U.S. so then we’re patching together places to stay.
We do have volunteers who host people. One of our volunteers early on hosted a family and they’re now like her family. There was a husband and wife and she was eight months pregnant, and she said, “People said there’s no room at the inn, but there was room at my inn” and now they’re her family. But that’s the exception, and with the volume of people coming, home hospitality can only hold so many people.
We’ve patched together some discount hotels until the people can get on their feet. The city has done a little bit of shelter, but the city now announced the opening of an office of migrant services, which is highly problematic because it will ban the newly arrived people from being eligible for city services down the road. So it’s a very discriminatory, punitive office that will ban people from getting the services they need to build a life here.
It hasn’t been approved to be a permanent program. We are actively calling on the members of city council to not approve it unless those discriminatory clauses can be removed.
MELINDA TUHUS: So, I’m just curious, with the numbers you’re talking about and they’re still coming, that must be putting a lot of pressure on the city’s finances. Is there any money coming from the feds or any other place to help with that?
KATE SUGARMAN: FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) has donated money but the FEMA money has not been terribly helpful. We’re volunteers. We’re on the ground. We’re there with our heart and soul and we’re really treating people the way we would want to be treated if we were in their shoes, and we’re not always seeing that from the official agencies. But in terms of a city like D.C., that I believe has a budget surplus, I think there are about 800 people who are staying here right now. Most people don’t stay here. It’s not like we’re talking about the billions of dollars that get spent on weapons spending. I think it’s a manageable amount of money. I think it’s solveable issue.
The office for migrant services is working under the assumption that people would be eligible for three days of city services and then they move on, but we’re on the ground with the people and we know that some are staying. But it’s manageable. We’re volunteers and we have personally raised about half a million dollars just out of our own pockets. These things are doable.
MELINDA TUHUS: In a perfect world, if you were in charge, what would you like to see happen?
KATE SUGARMAN: I guess, looking at the model of how Ukrainian refugees were treated, let’s treat everyone as if they’re Ukrainian. I’m very happy that we are welcoming Ukrainian refugees, and I think we should do that with immigrants who are legally here – they’ve got the legal right to seek safety in this country. To quote the journalist Maria Hinojosa, the people that we’re seeing are highly motivated, they’re hard-working, they’ve got grit, they’ve got all the things that a country wants. Our country has a very severe labor shortage in our country now. Welcoming these people is like hitting the jackpot.
For more information, visit Sanctuary Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia at
linktr.ee/sanctuarydmv and Solidarity with Migrants at linktr.ee/
