'They're coming to be our neighbors.' Las Cruces resettles more than 200 Afghan refugees

LAS CRUCES - More than 200 refugees who fled Afghanistan as the United States withdrew military forces last year now call Las Cruces home.

The Las Cruces branch of Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains, the state’s primary non-governmental refugee resettlement organization, and El Calvario United Methodist Church have each helped refugee families establish new lives in the city over the last several months.

"They're coming to be our neighbors. They're going to live here permanently (in many cases)," said Rev. George Miller, pastor of El Calvario and executive director of the El Calvario Immigrant Advocacy Center.

The organizations, within the first 90 days of a refugee's arrival in Las Cruces, assist them with securing housing, employment, seasonal clothing, household items and medical screenings. The refugees also are assisted with enrolling in government benefits or enrolling children in school. At LFS, they must complete a cultural orientation class aimed at helping them adjust to life in the United States.

"The program is really only 90 days to get them up and running," Miller said.

In October, LFS reported they had anticipated accepting up to 100 Afghan refugees in Las Cruces when the organization submitted projected capacities to its national office and the federal government. As of Feb. 4, LFS has resettled 110 people in Las Cruces, southern New Mexico LFS Coordinator Andrew Byrd said.

Byrd said the organization is expecting to receive up to 125 people by the end of the program.

"There's so many more Afghan refugees that they're trying to resettle than there is capacity," Byrd said. LFS received requests from the organization's national office through the federal government "to do a little bit more."

Byrd said the additional 25 refugees the local organization accepted "were all related to the families we had already received."

More: NMSU student, professor launch volunteer project to assist Afghan refugees in NM

El Calvario, through a partnership with Church World Service — another one of the nation's nine resettlement agencies along with Lutheran — has resettled about 100 people in town so far. Miller said he expects the total number to be 105 when the program ends.

Once the 90-day period expires, the Afghan refugees have access to refugee support services for up to five years.

Emergency situation

More than 100,000 refugees fled Afghanistan in late August 2021 when the Taliban took over the country. The American military helped many refugees flee to the United States, providing temporary shelter at eight military bases, including nearby Holloman Air Force Base and Fort Bliss.

Nearly 7,100 Afghan refugees were housed at Holloman between August and January. The last group departed the air force base on Jan. 26.

The refugees who resettled in Las Cruces may have come from any of the military bases nationwide where they were being temporarily housed.

The Afghan resettlement effort is unique, Miller said, because of the number of people needing resettlement at once and the urgency of the situation.

"This is an enormous number of people that were evacuated out of the country," Miller said. "It's pretty rare to ever see that. Normally people wait in camps … maybe it's in Afghanistan itself or a country nearby, (and) they live in camps until they get approval to come to the United States. These guys came on the planes, as many as they could fit in there, as fast as they could."

Miller said he thinks the last resettlement effort of this size in his lifetime happened following the end of the Vietnam War.

For both LFS and El Calvario, one of the biggest challenges has been finding permanent housing for the refugees.

More: Staying could mean death. The escape nearly killed her. How one woman fled Afghanistan for freedom.

"There's just not a lot of availability," Byrd said. That's led to refugees needing to sometimes stay in local hotels for extended periods while apartment vacancies open up.

"The federal government, they don't wait for there to be a house available before they send us families," Byrd said. "So when families get here, and there's not a house or apartment ready, they go into hotels."

"There's a real shortage of housing on the market, but we were lucky," Miller said. El Calvario connected with several property owners to get almost all of the people received into housing, he said.

Byrd said landlords or property owners who have apartments to rent or have vacant homes and would like to assist the refugees should reach out to the organization.

Michael McDevitt is a city and county government reporter for the Sun-News. He can be reached at 575-202-3205, mmcdevitt@lcsun-news.com or @MikeMcDTweets on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Las Cruces Sun-News: Las Cruces resettles more than 200 Afghan refugees