NORTHAMPTON — Kathryn Buckley-Brawner, head of the city’s refugee resettlement effort, is sending a clear message regarding the president’s executive order that has frozen her process: “Fight like hell.”
Buckley-Brawner updated the City Council at Thursday’s meeting, unable to keep the sorrow from her voice as she told councilors all they’ve worked on for the past year is “virtually shut down” for at least 120 days.
Council Chambers was brimming with people, and some cried as Buckley-Brawner and city councilors discussed how 18 — five of whom are children aged 10 months to 8 years — of the 51 people they’d committed to accept were stuck in limbo.
Ward 4 Councilor Gina-Louise Sciarra fought back tears as she spoke of the refugees prevented from getting to Northampton because of President Donald Trump’s “hateful, discriminatory and life-threatening act.”
“These are no longer abstract people,” she said, crying. “These would be my children’s classmates. It’s unbelievably heartbreaking.”
Councilors unanimously approved a resolution condemning Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order, which halted the refugee resettlement program for 120 days, and barred refugees from Syria indefinitely. A 90-day suspension was put in place for anyone traveling from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Sudan, Somalia and Yemen.
Visa holders from seven countries named in the executive order have had their visas “provisionally” revoked without notice.
“Shame on our president,” Ward 6 Councilor Marianne LaBarge said. “I think this is a disgrace.”
Councilors suspended rules and moved two readings on the matter, agreeing their message must be immediately sent regarding the “unconstitutional” ban.
“That’s what really disturbed me — the disrespect for our democracy,” Councilor At-Large Ryan O’Donnell said.
Buckley-Brawner said some of the 18 people for whom the agency had assurances had been notified they’d be coming to Northampton.
“It took them 24 months to get into the pipeline,” she said. “All of that time, all of that anguish — to be so close.”
Asked what the community can do to help, Buckley-Brawner took on a resolute tone. She said not to let righteous anger flag until its source is resolved and those 51 refugees are in Northampton.
“Be as outraged today as you were yesterday,” she said.
Council President Bill Dwight assured Buckley-Brawner there’d be shortage of anger in the months ahead. “Unfortunately I think the president is going to provide us with plenty of outrage in the days to come,” he said.
Buckley-Brawner asked the room to channel that frustration into action, to call their legislators.
“Call, and if you did it yesterday, do it again today. Scream and holler. Make noise. The minute we stop making noise is the minute we lose,” she said. “We can do this. I just know it.”
In addition to all of the lives derailed by the order, Buckley-Brawner said that because Trump also cut the number of allowable refugees from 110,000 to 50,000 per year, resettlement agencies will shut down and “let people go.”
“This is a huge cut,” she said, explaining that funding dries up without people to resettle. “There are impacts into the next fiscal year.”
Still, she said, Catholic Charities will spend other money of its own to advance the resettlement process, if it comes to that.
Ward 2 Councilor Dennis Bidwell said while he’s sure he’ll hear about how the council passed “yet another” resolution, “it really is critical that we be on record.”
While resolutions like this aren’t binding, he said, they send a message of solidarity to other municipalities across the country, banding together against the federal government’s actions.
Ward 7 Councilor Alisa Klein said this isn’t an ethereal conversation — “this is about people’s lives.”
“It’s really unthinkable to a lot of us here in Northampton that we would be separated from our families,” she said. “But this is the reality of what this travel ban — this Muslim ban — does.”
Dwight called the resolution, which will be mailed to Trump, “an expression of shame.”
“It is our responsibility to call him out,” he said, his voice breaking. “To not say anything would be a deeper shame.”
Amanda Drane can be contacted at adrane@gazettenet.com.