For migrants, targeted interventions are the warmest welcome

In recent months, Govs. Greg Abbott (R-Texas) and Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) have exploited the stream of migrants traveling over the Texas border to score points with their conservative base — with Abbott busing tens of thousands of migrants to Washington D.C., Chicago and New York City since April, and DeSantis flying 50 refugees to Martha’s Vineyard in September.

In DeSantis’s case, at least, the stunt didn’t work out as planned. Residents in Martha’s Vineyard showed up en masse to welcome the migrants, with restaurants providing free food and residents donating bedding, toiletries and candy.

In a political environment that is increasingly hostile to refugees, their response was a moving example of compassion and shared humanity. But while compassion is a good place to start, meeting the needs of refugees who cross into the United States requires more than just good intentions.

Much of the current group of asylum seekers crossing the Mexico-U.S. border come from Venezuela, a country that has been mired not only in economic crisis since the election of former President Nicolás Maduro Moros in 2013 but also by rampant human rights violations, such as extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, unlawful detention and child labor. To get to the United States, they have walked thousands of miles through dangerous conditions and treacherous terrain.

For women refugees, there is the additional consideration of gender-based violence — often at the hands of the very people who are supposed to protect them, such as immigration officials and humanitarian workers. 

In the United States and elsewhere, refugee women and girls are subjected to higher rates of physical, sexual and psychological violence, fueled by economic precarity, discrimination, social isolation and unfamiliar cultural contexts. They are often reluctant to report abuse for fear of being punished, deported, or simply not believed due to their status. 

Now, upon their arrival to the United States, the refugees DeSantis flew to Martha’s Vineyard have experienced yet another form of violence: a forced relocation across the country without their consent or full understanding of where they were being taken, to a place that was neither set up for nor equipped to deal with the needs of a sudden influx of refugees.

These people need food and bedding, yes. But they also need experienced, expert-informed care that addresses the full complexity of their trauma and experience.

Fortunately, there are good models out there on how to do this. Last year, the organization I work with, VOICE, collaborated with UNICEF on a guide to help service providers working with Venezuelan refugees — in this case, focusing on the needs of adolescent girls.

In the guide, we talk about how gender-based violence can play out differently depending on the diversity of identities asylum seekers hold: A 15-year-old will have different risks than an adult woman, for example, and refugees of indigenous or Afro-descendent background have an elevated risk of violence due to racism and discrimination. We also talk about the full breadth of violence that gender-based violence encompasses, including early or forced marriage, sexual exploitation, domestic violence, physical assault, trafficking and more.

We also offer providers detailed information and advice on how to meet these complex and diverse needs, drawing upon international best practices such as making sure that girls and women don’t have to pass through unsafe locations to access services, or ensuring that survivors understand how and where their information will be used before they disclose what are often traumatic experiences. And we show how meeting the needs of survivors of gender-based violence requires a multi-pronged, intersectional approach, spanning trauma-related medical care, emotional support, cash assistance, education and livelihood opportunities to reduce their vulnerability to further exploitation. 

This information is essential for anyone working with refugees or other traumatized populations. But it is most valuable when it is used to inform policy and practice.

In this, the U.S. can look to its northern neighbor, Canada, whose work resettling families from Afghanistan last year offers an example of how to put expert recommendations on refugee settlement into practice. 

Understanding that refugees require specialized support, Canada made sure to relocate families to cities with skilled and specialist resettlement service providers who would be equipped to meet their needs. They also put screening for gender-based violence front and center in their response by handing out literature on domestic violence in all languages spoken in Afghanistan, prioritizing mental health treatment over COVID quarantines and separating women and children from violent family members.

The Biden administration campaigned partly on a promise to be more humane to the people coming into this country than the administration that preceded it. But while the rhetoric has changed, too often our migration systems end up reproducing the harm and violence that asylum seekers were fleeing from in the first place.

With the migrant crisis unlikely to end any time soon, the United States has an opportunity to live up to its professed values and provide asylum seekers with the support they need to fully transition into their new communities. But to do this, we need more than just good intentions: We need informed, gender-sensitive care shaped by global expertise and best practice.

Natasha Simone Alexenko is the United States Program Advisor for VOICE, a cutting-edge feminist organization accelerating a global revolution against systemic violence, powered by women and girls.