Local faith organizations provide support for refugees in the Triangle

For Adam Clark, welcoming refugees and asylum seekers is fundamental to his Christian faith. 

Clark is the executive director of the Durham chapter of World Relief, a global Christian humanitarian organization dedicated to refugee resettlement and immigrant outreach. He said World Relief Durham welcomes around 350 refugees to the Triangle region each year through its resettlement refugee program, which connects new arrivals with legal assistance, job training, mental health counseling and other critical social services. 

“We’re just an adapter to help refugees and other immigrants plug into mainstream services,” Clark said. 

Although World Relief is non-denominational, Clark said its work is rooted in a faith-based conviction that all human life is sacred. Biblical teachings oblige all Christians to demonstrate hospitality to foreigners, he said — the Gospel of Matthew details how Jesus himself was a refugee, fleeing to Egypt to escape Roman persecution.

“To be an anti-immigrant [should be] an oxymoron,” he said. “Everyone should understand that because every single person is created in God’s image — from our perspective — and has infinite value, so they should all really be treated the same.” 

Since former President Jimmy Carter signed the Refugee Act of 1980, which created the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the federal executive branch has determined how many refugees enter the United States each year. Nine nationally-designated refugee resettlement agencies sponsor new arrivals and provide reception and placement services for their first 90 days in the U.S.

As of 2016, North Carolina ranked among the top 10 states for refugee resettlement cases. The majority populations in the Triangle fled from conflicts in Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Syria. Since 2022, resettlement providers in the Triangle have also welcomed an influx of Afghan and Ukranian refugees. 

In January, President Donald Trump issued an executive order suspending all refugee admissions to the United States, followed by stop work directives for federally-funded refugee resettlement agencies. 

The Durham chapter of Church World Services, one of four refugee resettlement agencies with affiliates in the Triangle, had to lay off key staff as a result of the stop work order, Bethany Showalter, Church World Services Durham interim director, said. Still, Church World Services and other agencies have filed a lawsuit challenging Trump’s orders.

“Our office is open, and we remain committed to serving refugee newcomers through the various programs that we have in place and through the private donations that we have received,” Showalter said.

Church World Services Durham also functions through the support of local parishes, congregations and faith communities, including the Judea Reform Congregation in Durham. Members of Judea Reform’s Refugee Resettlement and Immigrant Justice Committee have secured homes, groceries and school backpacks for 44 refugee families, Showalter said.

Senior Rabbi Matt Soffer said Judea Reform’s congregants take pride and joy in their work with refugees and asylum seekers, which is foundational to Judaism’s origin story.

“We were strangers, we were pushed out,” he said. “The relationship that the Jewish people have with God is understood out of that prism of liberation — of exile and coming home. So we have an obligation to welcome people home. If we don‘t check that box, then I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that we lose our right to worship God.”

After the refugee admissions ban, Soffer said three families from Venezuela, Colombia and Tanzania that Judea Reform planned on welcoming had their travel dates canceled indefinitely. 

Holy Infant Catholic Church in Durham is another key partner for Triangle resettlement agencies. The church established its refugee resettlement team in July 2023 after parishioners Barbara Gadient and Kathy Bartlett completed a course on faith and immigration justice. 

Their work includes customizing new arrivals’ homes and maintaining a vegetable garden for refugee families.

“When the kids from the [Democratic Republic of] the Congo arrived, two of them were diagnosed with malnutrition,” Bartlett said. “During our time with them, we were able to get them off the malnutrition list, which, to me, was the biggest accomplishment that I had a part in.”

Ruth Gibson is a member of the Community Church of Chapel Hill, a Unitarian Universalist congregation that served as a sanctuary church during the first Trump administration. Gibson was a Unitarian Universalist minister in Boston in the early 1980s, which was the height of the sanctuary movement that began as a response to then-President Ronald Reagan’s denial of Central American asylum claims.

“We love that we have the support of our congregation to do this, because not everybody’s in that position,” Gibson said. “It’s so good — when you’re feeling helpless about the trouble in the world — to know that there’s something you can do that actually does make a difference.”

@phoebemartel1

@DTHCityState | city@dailytarheel.com