International Nonprofits See a Tough Road Ahead Despite Court Rulings on Travel Ban

Despite recent court rulings blocking President Trump’s efforts to restrict travel into the United States, international nonprofits, including groups that help resettle refugees, worry they will face a much tougher working environment in the years ahead.

“I don’t think there is any question that the number of refugees resettled in the U.S. will go down,” said Joel Charny, director of the Norwegian Refugee Council USA. “Will it go down to zero or historically low levels? That is unclear.”

Mr. Charny said he was heartened that the most recent legal defeat for Trump — Thursday’s ruling by a three-judge federal appeals court — was a unanimous decision, and that the court noted that no immigrants from the seven countries targeted by Trump’s executive order had committed terrorist acts in the United States.

“Although the decision is gratifying, caution as to its overall impact is warranted. The administration’s reaction to the decision makes it clear that it remains determined to restrict immigration and refugee resettlement in the United States in the name of national security,” Mr. Charny said in an email. “It will appeal the decision to the Supreme Court immediately.”

International nonprofits pledged to push Congress to pass legislation that dismantles the executive order.

“To refugees desperately seeking safety, every single day makes a difference,” Church World Service, a refugee resettlement group, said in a statement. “This continued stay will enable us to save that many more lives during this injunction period — and we will not rest until this executive order is fully rescinded.”

Exhaustive Process

Issued January 27, the executive order imposed a 90-day travel ban from seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. It also suspended the admissions of all refugees for 120 days, while barring refugees from war-torn Syria indefinitely.

The executive order faced immediate legal challenges. Among those to file suit were the American Civil Liberties Union and Oxfam, which argued that the United States already has effective, rigorous vetting in place for refugees seeking to settle in the United States.

“It’s an exhaustive screening process that can take over two years due to required screenings, in-person interviews, investigations, and clearance by a host of government agencies,” Raymond Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America, said in a statement.

Federal District Court Judge James Robart in Washington State on February 3 temporarily blocked enforcement of the executive order. On Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld the freeze. The Trump administration has not announced its next move. President Trump responded to the court decision by tweeting “SEE YOU IN COURT.”

Obstacles for Nonprofits

The executive order created immediate obstacles for nonprofits that work with refugees or have staff and programs in the countries named in the travel ban.

One such group is the Washington-based Atlas Corps, a fellowship program that has placed more than 500 foreign nonprofit and civil-society leaders with organizations such as the Heritage Foundation and the Human Rights Campaign for 12-to-18-month stints.

Atlas Corps has a budget of about $5 million and a staff of 12. In its 11 years of operation, it has placed 39 fellows from the countries included in President Trump’s executive order. Soon after the refugee and travel restrictions were announced last month, the inquiries started coming, said chief executive Scott Beale.

“We had people who emailed already saying, ‘Are you still taking Muslim candidates?’ ” Mr. Beale said. “That is enlightening to me because it shows that overseas people aren’t hearing the distinction between these seven countries. They may very well be a Muslim nonprofit leader in India or Malaysia or Canada and asking are you still taking Muslim candidates.”

Feeling Overwhelmed

Atlas Corps had just welcomed to Washington its latest fellows last month when the executive order came down. That incoming group included four people from the seven countries on the travel-ban list.

Among them is Abeer Pamuk. The 24-year-old Syrian was raised in Aleppo and was studying English literature at the university there when the Syrian civil war erupted. Ms. Pamuk’s mother, who works as anesthesiologist in a public hospital, sent her to live with an aunt in Lebanon. But after six months, alarmed by what was happening back home, Ms. Pamuk returned.

Then 19 years old, she lied about her age to get a job as a field worker with the aid organization SOS Children’s Villages. She began collecting and writing the stories of the children she encountered on the job and was eventually promoted to communications positions in Damascus and then to Morocco.

She was overwhelmed by what she saw on the ground.

“I have always wanted to help, but at some point in Syria you feel like you are very small, and you start to feel your impact is really limited,” Ms. Pamuk said.

A colleague in the United States told her about Atlas Corps.

“I knew that if I was accepted in this fellowship, I would be given a chance to meet young people like me who are also coming from very challenging countries,” Ms. Pamuk said. “I knew also that these people would be creative people, insistent on solving problems back in their countries.”

The application and vetting process took more than a year: Atlas accepts about 2 percent of those who seek a fellowship. On December 24, Ms. Pamuk received her visa to travel to the United States and was “jumping in the street in Casablanca,” she said. She landed at Washington’s Dulles Airport on January 14.

If Ms. Pamuk and the other three fellows from the banned countries had tried to travel two weeks later, they might have been blocked from entering the United States, said Mr. Beale.

Because of the executive order and the ongoing court battle, it is unclear if Atlas Corps will accept fellows in its next cohort — to start in May — from the seven countries listed, said Mr. Beale. Applicants will have to be handled on a case-by-case basis.

Disaster Response Impeded

Nancy Wilson, chief executive of Relief International, said the aid group works in six of the seven countries named in the executive order, with staff in those places totaling more than 600. The travel restrictions forced the group to cancel or alter travel for several key employees, including three with U.S. green cards.

Relief International’s regional directors gathered outside of Washington this week for a leadership meeting, Ms. Wilson said. The group provided traveling staff with letters confirming their employment and stating the reason for their presence in the United States.

When she arrived at Dulles, the group’s Middle East director, traveling on a European passport, was questioned, Ms. Wilson said. She produced the letter stating her employment, and the customs official told her she was being let through only because it included the CEO’s personal cellphone number.

“The United States has always been a strong bipartisan supporter of humanitarian aid,” Ms. Wilson said. “It has made us leaders in the world. The key question now is whether America first means America only.”

Christy Delafield, senior global communications officer at Mercy Corps, said that the aid group has hundreds of staff members who are citizens of the countries named in the executive order. She and her colleagues are worried the order could also trigger reciprocal travel bans for U.S. citizens trying to move about abroad.

“We have U.S. team members working in those countries and others who travel there regularly to provide our field teams with technical assistance and other support,” Ms. Delafield said. “A travel ban in either direction erodes our ability to do our work effectively, including our ability to respond to any global emergencies or other disasters that may occur.”

Noah Gottschalk, senior humanitarian policy adviser at Oxfam America, said the executive order was enormously disruptive. Both he and Ms. Delafield noted that the in-country staff for big aid organizations travel regularly to the United States to brief administration and congressional officials on conditions and events in remote regions.

“We are talking about being able to brief U.S. officials who are policy makers on details on situations in countries where U.S. visibility is low and U.S. presence is scarce,” Mr. Gottschalk said.

The executive order brought some of those plans to a standstill.

Wrote Ms. Delafield in an email to The Chronicle: “A handful of such visits to the U.S. had been planned in the next 90 days, and those team members and others who are citizens of the countries in question have postponed U.S. travel as a result of the order.”

Correction: The boldface quote in a previous version of this article said that customs officials questioned the European director of Relief International instead of the Middle East director.