Sense of Decency

By DENNIS HARROD

“For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home.”

From the Gospel of Matthew

Across the globe, more than 43 million people are refugees, people forced to flee their own country. Their future is dismal, and their hopes are slim and getting slimmer. As of Jan. 27, 2025, The United States of America slammed the door shut on most of them. Donald Trump’s Executive Order of Jan. 20, 2025, says “entry into the United States of refugees under the USRAP (U.S. Refugee Admissions Program) would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.” With those words, hope dimmed across the world. But the lights have not gone out entirely. 

“There are endless examples of people doing kind things,” says Dave Holmes, who along with his wife Carolyn, was one of the founders of Cazenovia Welcomes Refugees. The group formed in 2017 to do just that, welcome refugees into the Madison County village. 

According to its Mission Statement, CWR aims to “create a welcoming place for everyone to live, work, go to school and enjoy recreation together.” The organization believes that “settling refugees as new Americans in Cazenovia will strengthen the civic fiber and compassionate heart of the community …. (and) add to the diversity and integration of our Cazenovia community.” According to 2023 Census data, the village of Cazenovia is 85% white with a $91,923 household income.

By 2018, CWR, working with InterFaith Works of Central New York (IFW), had helped a Kurdish family move to Cazenovia. The father had worked as a translator with U.S. forces in Iraq and neither he nor his family were safe there, says Carolyn Holmes. When that first home later became unavailable, a local woman purchased another house, specifically for the family to rent.

“It was total benevolence,” Dave Holmes says of the woman’s action. Buying the house and making it available “brought her joy,” Carolyn Holmes adds.

Now, the family is in the process of buying a house in Fayetteville, just over the Onondaga County line in the town of Manlius.

Meanwhile, CWR was able to work with Cazenovia College to refurbish a college-owned house on Lincklaen Street. In 2022, after countless volunteer hours and more than $60,000 of community-raised funds to pay for renovations, the house was ready to rent to another family, this one from Afghanistan. They had left their country when Kabul fell and found their way to the adjacent town of Manlius with the help of a U.S. Military officer who had served with the father in Afghanistan.

Their welcome was a story of community kindness and involvement. 

“Lots of people came in and volunteered in small and important ways,” says Dave Holmes. Staff members at the college helped whenever needed, students interacted with the family and babysat for the children. The local VFW post loaned tables for a fund-raising dinner.

Any fears of resistance from the community proved unfounded, says Pauline Cecere, former co-chair of CWR’s steering committee. “The community was welcoming,” she says. “There were no direct challenges.”

Carolyn Holmes says she had “half expected to see a nasty sign on a front lawn, but it never happened.” 

When Halloween approached, and CWR members realized that Lincklaen Street gets hundreds of trick-or-treaters, people made sure the family had candy to give out.

But then the college announced it was closing and another house had to be found. 

“When it (the college) collapsed, it was really disappointing,” says Carolyn Holmes.

Again, kindness prevailed, and a local couple made a house available to rent to the family.

Other acts of kindness stood out as well. Community Bikes of Hamilton, an organization that refurbishes bicycles and distributes them throughout Madison County, gave bikes to the children of both families.

“It’s another example of people coming out of the woodwork to help,” says Dave Holmes. “People in Madison County are really pretty nice, for the most part.”

He talks about other, countless acts of kindness along the way. He remembers how helpful and patient the Social Security administration was in helping get documents in order. “The first guy wasn’t very helpful, kept sending us to other departments,” he says. “But then we worked with a woman from Erieville who made sure everything was in order. She didn’t have to be so helpful.”

Since then, the family has bought a house and moved to Cicero, about 25 miles away. They had hopes of staying in Cazenovia and being admitted to The Landing at Burke Meadows, a new housing development that aims to provide affordable housing for seniors and families. But it didn’t work out and the family ended up buying the house in Cicero. This was a disappointment to CWR, whose members were so pleased with the welcome that the family had received. 

“It was a loss for the community,” Pauline Cecere says. 

But it’s also a sign of the program’s success, says Dave Holmes. The man has a job that allowed him to buy a house and put down roots in the United States. Unfortunately, not in Cazenovia.

The problem is and always has been a lack of affordable housing in Cazenovia. That is compounded by the lack of public transportation, making a driver’s license and automobile almost imperative. CWR members are even now driving a young Ukrainian to Onondaga Community College, 45 minutes away, for her classes.

An uncertain future

CWR’s future is a little uncertain. Aside from federal assaults on refugee resettlement, the organization is in the process of restructuring. It has redefined itself as a “starfish” organization, a decentralized structure in which there is no central command or leader but where individuals take responsibility for tasks and make sure they get done. One advantage is that as volunteers are lost for one reason or another, the organization can continue to function. Like a starfish, it can survive and regenerate more quickly than an organization that relies upon one centralized leader.

With no refugees coming in the foreseeable future, CWR will continue working in the community to lay the groundwork for resettling families when and if it becomes possible again. They will be meeting later this month to decide where to go from here. They will also continue working with InterFaith Works, which is facing its own crisis with the cutoff of refugees. 

InterFaith Works of Central New York was founded in 1976 to “build bridges of understanding among people of different religions and across racial divides,” according to its website. “Over the years, the agency added social service programs to address the needs of people who are vulnerable, low-income, targets of oppression, and refugees who arrive through the federal resettlement programs.”

This last part is important. IFW works with the federal government to resettle refugees who have been thoroughly vetted by the government. “It is well known, well documented and assured by the FBI, Homeland Security, CIA, and the United Nations that refugees who are moved out of camps to become New Americans are the most carefully screened and vetted immigrants on the planet,” says IWF on its website. It goes on to say that the language of Trump’s executive order “is about selectively excluding people for political purposes.”

In a January 22 newsletter from IWF, Executive Director Beth Broadway compares the efforts of the new administration to “death by a thousand cuts.” 

“The Executive Order is the first cut, and it is having its desired effect – the spreading of fear,” she writes.

‘The Push’

In response, immediately after the November election, IWF and other refugee resettlement agencies, along with the Biden administration, participated in “The Push” -– a full-scale campaign to bring as many refugees as possible to the U.S.

“Last week,” she writes in the Jan. 22 newsletter, agencies and the government “achieved a landmark goal of settling 6,000 people in just three months across New York State. These were people who were fully vetted, waiting for travel documents and many came to be reunited with their families.”

InterFaith Works alone settled more than 400 people during “The Push.” In the week leading up to the Jan. 20 inauguration, “we received 71 people representing 22 households,” Broadway writes.

Broadway also credits the countless acts of kindness that made it possible, from her staff and churches, temples and mosques, to volunteers who set up households, provided baby quilts and cleaned and donated more than 1,800 coats.

Trump’s executive order goes on to say that “Within 90 days of this order, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall submit a report to the President through the Homeland Security Advisor regarding whether resumption of entry of refugees into the United States under the USRAP would be in the interests of the United States.”

So, for 90 days from Jan. 27, uncertainty and fear govern the lives of refugees and those who provide for them. “It will be a big blow,” if the shutdown continues indefinitely, Broadway says. But IFW, like CWR, will continue. 

In April, when the 90 days are up, she hopes that the government will have assessed IFW’s work to be acceptable. “If not,” she says, “we’ll look for other funding sources.”

Other sources include the New York State Enhanced Service to Refugees Program, the Federal Department of Health and Human Services, foundations and of course private donors. Donating, she says, “is another way to protest.”

Broadway says she finds hope in her belief in “the core dignity of all human beings, a true source of decency.” They’ve gone through this kind of thing before, during the first Trump administration, and they survived. She finds hope also in the people that the agency attracts to its staff, “compassionate, kind and able to pivot whenever we have to to improve the lot of our fellow humans.”

“We may be on our knees,” she says, “but it’s because we are praying.”

For more information:

Executive Order Realigning The United States Refugee Admissions Program: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/realigning-the-united-states-refugee-admissions-program/

InterFaith Works of Central New York: https://www.interfaithworkscny.org/

Cazenovia Welcomes Refugees: https://cazwelcomesrefugees.org/index.html

See also Utica: The Last Refuge for a look at success stories of refugee resettlement: https://www.lastrefugedocumentary.com/

Dennis Harrod is a co-founder of Sense of Decency.