Assessment of U.S. Department of State PRM ‘Affiliate Monitoring Report’, Heartland Alliance, April 24-26, 2002.

Christopher Coen

Director

Friends of Refugees (FORefugees)

Although the State Department PRM Office of Admissions’ ‘Final Report’ indicates there to be many problems with the USCRI (formerly known as IRSA) refugee resettlement affiliate in Chicago, the Heartland Alliance for Human Needs & Human Rights (HA), the PRM monitors deliberately minimized and omitted quite a few additional problems which they had confirmed. At the time of the April 2002 investigation, PRM Office of Admissions personnel, Kelly Gauger and Taiya Smith, told me that in the previous two days of their visit that they had heard many complaints [regarding accusations of abuse and neglect] directly from the refugees. They then omitted and downplayed almost all these facts from their subsequent monitoring report.

For example, the Final Report denies that the youth were threatened (p.7, para. 4, line 2), even though Ms. Gauger told me that one of the refugees had indeed told her that he had been told by a HA staff member that he could send the refugee back to Sudan. Instead, the monitors write that a refugee claims he was told that plans could be arranged for him to go back to Africa (p.3, para. 3). In her letter to me dated June 6, 2002, Janice Belz of the PRM Office of Admissions put a slightly different spin on this threat. She wrote that there was no evidence that refugees were “routinely” or seriously threatened. I believe she made this claim to avoid any criticism of her office’s oversight, as this particular threat was made to two refugees on one occasion only. That one occasion should have been viewed by the Office of Admissions as one occasion too many, especially because it involved vulnerable young refugees, who have a history of being abused.

The resettlement agency, Heartland Alliance, with the assistance of the PRM Office of Admissions downplayed this emotional abuse and the perpetrator continued to remain in daily contact with vulnerable young refugees. Ms. Gauger also told me that the threats were not deemed serious because one of the refugees had laughed after he told her about the incident. I explained to Ms. Gauger that she needed to be careful about her cultural interpretation of his laugh, as the Sudanese youth as a rule often laugh when speaking about very traumatic past experiences (as she well knows, having worked with refugees in the past as an employee of a refugee resettlement agency). The ’Lost Boys’ refugees laughed when recounting wild animal attacks in which they were horrified to witness other children being killed, and of incidents in which people committed suicide at the Kakuma refugee camp. Their laugh is akin to a nervous laugh. Ms. Gauger nevertheless went ahead and did her best to downplay the threats which the refugees complained to her about. Furthermore, although the monitors denied that the refugees were threatened with deportation, their monitoring report recommendations include suggesting to resettlement staff that they should never tell refugees that they have the power to return them to their countries of origin (p.8. item #4). Why would the monitors have needed to make this suggestion if the threat was not deemed serious?

Also, it is said that at no time did the refugees go without adequate clothing. They indeed did go without adequate clothing. I had to bring them winter boots and coats and other clothing items when I was unsuccessful in getting anyone from Heartland Alliance, or from the federal oversight agencies, to provide these “minimum-required” clothing items. Young refugees brought from equatorial climates and experiencing their first North American autumn and winter must be furnished with adequate clothing. The monitors also claimed that the local volunteers (members of a local evangelical church that provided some assistance to local refugee resettlement agencies in exchange for potential new refugee converts) nearly exploded with disbelief when hearing that refugees had gone without warm-weather clothing (p.6, para. 2). Why would anyone doubt that a volunteer such as myself would waste his own money on winter clothing for the refugees if the refugees had not needed them? Unfortunately, the PRM monitors simply count items with no effort to ascertain who gave them these items or whether or not they were received in a timely manner. I know that the church much later delivered winter coats to the refugees after I had already given them coats. They did this after Heartland Alliance requested their help after I made my complaints to the State Department. The State Department monitors then showed up and simply counted coats, and concluded that refugees had coats. Kelly Gauger also told me that Heartland Alliance only provided women’s and children’s clothing to the young adult male refugees. Ms Gauger and Ms. Smith then omitted that information from the monitoring report.

Also, the monitors claim that no one was put in empty apartments. One of the ‘Lost Boys’ refugees told Ms. Gauger and Ms. Smith in my presence that, in fact, his apartment had only mattresses on the floor and a bag of beans and a bag of rice in the kitchen — and nothing else. That bolsters similar assertions made by other refugees. The apartments were essentially devoid of contractually required items. This too was omitted from the ‘Final Report’.

Although the monitors met directly with refugees, and were free to ask them any questions they chose, they instead quote extensively from the Heartland Alliance agency’s case file notes (e.g. p.3, para. 2, last sentence). The files indicate that a refugee asked for bus tokens. What the report fails to understand or to mention is that the reason the refugee needed tokens for the bus was because the Heartland Alliance employment case manager would not take him to look for and apply for jobs. The Heartland Alliance employee then also refused to give the refugee the bus tokens. This, in spite of the fact that U.S. refugee resettlement program makes early employment it’s main priority. The government monitors should have asked the refugees about this, to ascertain if the notes in the case files represented the full story.

The monitors also went out of their way to dismiss the fact that the refugees live in small, run-down apartments, saying that the refugees “like” to save money by sharing a one-bedroom apartment (p. 4, para. 3). This successfully avoids having to admit that the refugees were unnecessarily resettled into a city with very expensive real estate, which therefore was not particularly appropriate for them. The Office of Admissions and the USCRI, with the help of Heartland Alliance, decided to place these refugees in Chicago. They put them in a city where apartments for the working poor are comprised of old, small, rundown, and insect and rodent-infested, yet expensive apartments in dangerous neighborhoods. What refugee finding themselves in such conditions would not want to save money by sharing a one-bedroom apartment?

The report also repeatedly points out that case files indicated that refugees with poor health had numerous doctor visits. This says very little. We do not know whether or not the case files are accurate. We do not know if the doctor visits were timely. The report does not indicate any efforts to compare the refugees’ assertions with the case files. Many refugees independently claimed to me that it took a long time to get appointments, and that medical treatment was refused at times when they requested it and needed it. This key issue is ignored. We also don’t know the quality of medical care they received by Heartland Alliance staff. Numerous doctor visits, and paid for by the government, may have simply padded the Heartland Alliance medical clinic bank account. What we now know is that most of the ‘Lost Boys’ refugees in the U.S. have, since that time, tested positive for the schistosomiasis and strongyloidiasis parasite antibodies. Many of these refugees repeatedly complained of stomach pain while having their complaints ignored. They were not tested or treated for these parasites which have long been known to be endemic in their part of east Africa. The ‘Lost Boys’ refugees and I were told that their symptoms were all in their head.

I would also like to call attention to all the other items that were omitted from this report. The Operational Guidance to Resettlement Agencies has a list of items that must be provided to the refugees as a ‘minimum standard’ for resettlement services. I documented the fact that most of these items were never supplied. The Final Report makes no mention that most items and services were not provided. This was an incomplete investigation.

Also, the monitors make the claim that the refugees never went without food (p.7, para. 4). Yet, no one ever claimed they had gone without food. I wrote that the refugees complained that appointments for food stamps were mixed up, delaying food stamps for weeks, and requiring the refugees to take a bus to Heartland Alliance headquarters every few days to get food coupons. It’s not impressive that the monitors conclude that no one went without food.

Finally, one of the most serious elements of this investigation was completely bypassed — the attacks on the refugees. I wrote letters as far back as January 2002 warning the PRM‘s Office of Admissions, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s ORR, and the Illinois Refugee Coordinator about a series of attacks and robberies. One of the first attacks involved a young female refugee who was robbed. Then in October 2001 three refugees were assaulted and had teeth punched out. In December 2001 a refugee was assaulted, had teeth knocked out, and was hospitalized. Another refugee was assaulted by Chicago police and hospitalized (the police later returned his social security card with the social security number crossed out). In January 2002 yet another refugee was assaulted and had teeth knocked out. Later that month another refugee opened his apartment door and was sprayed in the face with mace and then robbed. In May 2002 the Latin Kings gang assaulted ten refugees, and three were stabbed and nearly killed. In July 2002 two more refugees were assaulted. One was knocked to the ground and the other was stabbed in the back of the head, receiving a laceration. In early September 2002, five assailants robbed a refugee at gunpoint in his apartment building.

Until the May 2002 attack, the resettlement agencies, the Illinois state refugee coordinator, and the PRM Office of Admissions did absolutely nothing to attempt to prevent further assaults. It was claimed that 24-hour protection could not be provided. Yet, the refugees didn’t need 24-hour police protection. They needed to be relocated to a safer neighborhood, indeed, where they originally should have been resettled. The Lost Boys who were originally placed in the Chicago suburbs of Wheaten and Elgin did not experience a single attack. The same was true of those placed in Fargo, ND, Rochester, MN, and in Grand Rapids, MI. The community march organized by the evangelical church only after the gang attack, and the police meetings, did nothing to stop the continuing attacks. The Chicago neighborhoods the refugees were put into are simply an inappropriate place to resettle a young, mostly rural, refugee group who have come to the U.S. with no family or ethnic community support, and who have been described by international refugee workers as one of the most traumatized groups of refugee youth ever seen. The Office of Admissions made an error and the young people being resettled paid the price. There were at least eight attacks resulting in twenty young Sudanese refugees being assaulted or robbed. That is one in five of these refugees assaulted — an extremely high rate of assault. The Final Report simply skipped the issue entirely. When I met with the monitors in April 2002 I again brought up the safety issues, and discussed the assaults. This was one month before the May attack. The Office of Admissions then did nothing. The monitors would not even agree that it was a valid issue.

This type of lax oversight and the protection of a resettlement agency affiliate by the PRM Office of Admissions is what will insure that we continue to have chronic and serious neglect and mistreatment of incoming refugees. This system appears to be managed in such a way that real oversight will never be achieved. The use of advance warnings for monitoring visits, which result in problems been cleaned up for monitoring visits, and of monitoring trips which fail to comprehensively review required services, results in problems being uncovered only sporadically. The consequences to resettlement agencies for their failure to provide required services, when it is discovered, is also little more than a slap on the wrist, resulting in little change, or change with no fear that future problems will also not lead to any serious consequences. Even a brief overview of other monitoring trip reports shows how common it is to find failure to provide required services. There appears to be chronic structural problems in the resettlement organizational process, such as a close and cozy relationship between the private resettlement agencies and their supposed government oversight offices, which prevents the resulting problems of the program from ever being corrected.

The negligent and abusive resettlement services offered to Sudanese refugees in Chicago by the USCRI’s Heartland Alliance are not out of the ordinary, but rather, are found throughout the nation. This will not change until the resettlement agencies are required to abide by their contractual responsibilities, and if they do not, receive serious and timely consequences for failure to protect and provide for the refugees that have been entrusted to their care.