Category 1: Preferred Communities

In Category 1, ORR seeks to promote opportunities for refugee self-sufficiency and effective resettlement. To that end, funds are made available for grants to voluntary agencies to increase placements of newly arriving refugees in preferred communities where there is a history of low welfare utilization and a favorable earned income potential relative to the cost of living.

In FY 2003, ORR awarded continuation grants, totaling $1,862,749, to national voluntary agencies to enhance entry level services in preferred communities with good employment opportunities needed by newly arriving refugees.

In the July 2003 closing of the Standing Announcement for Services to Recently Arrived Refugees, a total of $2,200,000 was awarded to nine national voluntary agencies to provide services to the Somali Bantu.

A supplement of $59,290 was awarded to Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society.

Category 2: Unanticipated Arrivals

The Unanticipated Arrivals Program is intended to provide resources that bridge the gap between the arrival of refugees and the time when their numbers are included in the population-based formula social service funds. Situations that Unanticipated Arrivals funding are intended to mediate include those where bilingual staff are needed for new arrivals, where refugee services do not exist, and where available services are not sufficient to meet the needs of the additional refugees.

In the February 2003 closing of the Standing Announcement for Services to Recently Arrived Refugees, ORR awarded four grants in the amount of $1,245,678 to the following applicants:

Category 3: Services for Arriving Refugees with Special Conditions

The purpose ORR seeks to fulfill through Category 3, Services for Arriving Refugees with Special Conditions, is to provide resources that will address the needs of targeted groups of refugees. ORR believes that enhanced case management, education, culturally and linguistically appropriate linkages and coordination with other service providers contributes to the overall improved well-being of refugees with special needs.

Situations for which applicants may compete for grants under Category 3 might include the following: (1) refugees with medical conditions requiring specialized health care; (2) youth and young adults who have undergone significant trauma or spent an unusually long period under refugee camp conditions; e.g., the Kakuma youth; (3) refugees disabled by the atrocities of warfare, such as those from Sierra Leone; and (4) refugees with grave social and emotional conditions including emotional trauma resulting from war.

In FY 2003, ORR awarded twelve grants in the amount of $2,000,912 to the following applicants:

Category 4: Ethnic Community Organizations

ORR supported 10 multi-site and 36 local ethnic organizational projects with awards totaling $8,011,363. The organizations provided various in-house and referral services, organized self-help networks, developed newsletters and web sites to enhance ethnic community organizing and interaction, and conducted community outreach, coalition building, self-assessment, strategic planning, resource development and leadership training activities.

Multi-Site Projects

Local Projects

• Refugee Family Enrichment Grants

In FY 2003, ORR provided 37 new grants with awards totaling four million dollars to public and private non-profit organizations. Refugee Family Enrichment projects are divided into two groups. One group of grantees provides marriage education workshops to refugee couples and youth in order to enhance and promote healthy relationships by providing the skills, tools, knowledge and support necessary to create and sustain healthy marriages. The second group of grantees provides funding for projects to aid the elderly in accessing appropriate services and to work with youth to promote healthy development.

By the end of the fiscal year, plans were under way for a mid-December workshop for marriage grantees. Projects will begin operating in January of 2004.

Marriage Education

Youth and Elderly

• Education Grants

In FY 2003, ORR awarded 38 new grants totaling $15,400,688 to State education agencies to assist local education agencies that are impacted by enrollment of large numbers of refugee children. These grants provide support for supplementary instruction to refugee students, fostering parent/school partnership and assistance to teachers and other school staff in improving their understanding of refugee children and their families. The following States received grants under this program:

In FY 2003, ORR continued support for elderly refugees with a new State discretionary grant program. This program brings together refugee service providers and mainstream area agencies on aging to coordinate programs for older refugees. Approximately $8,733,484 was awarded to 27 States to establish or expand working relationships with State and area agencies on aging to insure that older refugees would be linked to local community mainstream aging programs. Grants were awarded to Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

In addition, ORR continued its working relationship with the Administration on Aging to identify ways in which both networks could work together more effectively at the State and local community levels to improve access to services for elderly refugees.

Technical assistance for mental health activities for refugees is available to U.S. resettlement communities under an inter-agency agreement with the Center for Mental Health Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Under this agreement, telephone consultation is available for communities on mental health treatment for refugee populations. Other activities conducted by two SAMHSA professionals include presentations at refugee-related conferences, consultation to ORR on mental health issues, consultation on refugee issues within SAMHSA and program development for refugees at SAMHSA.

Treatment and Services for Torture Survivors is a program to provide assistance to victims of torture. Services to be provided include treatment for the physical and psychological effects of torture and social and legal services. In order to increase the overall capacity of the program to serve torture victims, the legislation also provides support for research and training for health care and other providers who are outside of treatment centers.

The psychosocial and health consequences of violence, and the traumatic stress that results, have emerged as major public health problems of our time. Torture constitutes an extreme form of violence, with potential for long-term psychological and physical suffering. Authorized by the Torture Victims Relief Act of 1998, this program provides rehabilitative services to enable torture victims to become productive community members.

Fourth Year Awards

Third Year Awards

Under this agreement, the Office of Humanitarian and Refugee Health of the Office of Global Health Affairs (OGHA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services provides technical assistance in organizing, conducting and financing health assessments, refugee preventive health activities, data management activities surrounding refugee health, medical interpretation, and available prevention and promotion materials in refugee languages. The Office also provides information on new refugee populations, staff trainings, caring for refugees with HIV and other special medical needs, providing/ promoting better communication with voluntary agencies, State health coordinators and mutual assistance associations, and providing mental health resources.

Victims of Trafficking

Human trafficking is a modern-day form of slavery. Victims of human trafficking are young children, teenagers, men and women. According to the U.S. government, approximately 600,000 to 800,000 victims annually are trafficked across international borders world-wide, and between 14,500 and 17,500 of those victims are trafficked into the U.S. each year.

Victims of human trafficking are lured into captivity through force, fraud, or coercion. Traffickers exploit them for the purpose of sexual exploitation or forced labor. Traffickers in the United States exploit their victims in a variety of ways: prostitution; the sex entertainment industry; domestic servitude; migrant agricultural or sweatshop labor; restaurant, janitorial, and other service industry work.

Traffickers use various techniques to instill fear in victims and to keep them enslaved. Some traffickers keep their victims under lock and key. However, the more frequent practice is to use less obvious techniques including:

In October 2000, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (the Act) gave the phenomenon of human trafficking a name, and made trafficking a serious federal crime. It also established a program of assistance to victims. The Act called upon officials at all levels of government to recognize victims of trafficking as the victims - rather than the perpetrators - of a crime.

HHS has several statutory responsibilities under the Act. Section 107(b)(1)(B) calls upon the Secretary of HHS to make benefits and services available to victims. Section 107(b)(1)(E) directs HHS to certify individuals who are victims of a severe form of trafficking and who are eligible to receive benefits and services to the same extent as refugees. To implement its responsibilities, the Department delegated the authority to conduct certification activities to the Administration for Children and Families, which in turn re-delegated authority to ORR.

Highlights of Activities

The Human Trafficking Program at ORR has undertaken the following new initiatives designed to increase the rate at which victims of human trafficking in the United States are identified, rescued, and assisted:

Certification and Eligibility Letters

The Act defines the term "severe forms of trafficking in persons" as (1) sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person who is induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age, or (2) the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.

For adults, ORR reviews whether the individual has been subjected to a severe form of trafficking and whether the two certification requirements are met:

For these victims, ORR issues a Certification Letter to the victim. ORR signs and notarizes the letter. The victims can present these letters as proof that they are eligible for federally funded or administered programs to the same extent as refugees. The letter has a toll-free number to ORR so that the benefit-granting agency can call to verify the victim's eligibility.

Under the Act, minor victims under 18 years of age do not need to be certified in order to receive benefits. For these victims, ORR issues eligibility letters, similar to the adult certification letters, stating that a child is a victim of a severe form of trafficking and is eligible for federally funded or administered benefits to the same extent as refugees.

In FY 2003, ORR issued 151 letters on behalf of victims, of which 145 were certification letters to adults and 6 were eligibility letters to minors under the age of 18. These certification and eligibility letters, combined with the 99 letters issued in FY 2002 and the 198 letters issued in FY 2001, bring to 448 the total number of letters issued during the first three fiscal years in which the program has operated.[1]

The FY 2003 letters were sent to benefit offices in 18 states. The largest concentrations of victims were in California, Oklahoma, Texas and New York.[2] The beneficiaries of these letters were predominately male (54 percent).[3] The countries of origin for the greatest number of victims were India (3 percent), Vietnam (11 percent), Mexico (9 percent), Indonesia (5 percent), Tonga (5 percent), Zambia (5 percent), and Thailand (4 percent). The countries of origin for the remaining victims were Bangladesh, Bolivia, Cameroon, China, Czech Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Honduras, Kenya, Korea, Latvia, Malaysia, Nepal, Nigeria, Peru, Philippines and Russia.

Grants to Assist Victims of Trafficking

Through discretionary grants, ORR has created a nationwide network of organizations to provide services to victims, provide technical assistance to service organizations and to engage in community outreach. These grants provide annual funding of $6.85 million to 26 organizations. All current ORR trafficking grants are for a three-year term.

In FY 2003, ORR awarded over $3.7 million in continuation grants to fifteen organizations throughout the U.S. The purpose of the grants is to provide non-governmental groups the resources to assist victims of trafficking in their transition from victimization to self-sufficiency. Grant funds may be used for a wide range of services, including case management, temporary housing, special mental health needs (such as trauma counseling), legal assistance referrals, and cultural orientation. Funds may also be used to raise public awareness through local and community outreach and to develop resources through training and technical assistance.

The following grants under Category 1 (Services to Victims of a Severe Form of Trafficking and/or Local/Community Outreach) were continued in FY 2003:

In FY 2003, ORR awarded the following Category 2 (Training and Technical Assistance) continuation grants:

In FY 2003, ORR awarded the following new Category 1 (Services to Victims of a Severe Form of Trafficking and/or Local/Community Outreach) grants totaling over $3.5 million:

Outreach Activities

HHS has initiated the campaign to Rescue & Restore Victims of Human Trafficking to help identify and assist victims in the United States. The Campaign message is a call to action for people to, as the Campaign posters implore, "look beneath the surface" of people they encounter and to call the HHS trafficking information hotline when they encounter possible trafficking situations.

The goal of the Rescue and Restore campaign is to increase the number of trafficking victims identified in the U.S. The first phase of the campaign focuses on outreach to those individuals who most likely encounter victims on a daily basis, but may not recognize them as victims of human trafficking. These include faith-based organizations, health care providers, social service organizations, law enforcement agencies, and organizations that conduct outreach to immigrant populations.

The campaign educates these groups about human trafficking, enabling them to screen for trafficking victims and to help victims get the assistance they need to access benefits and services under the TVPA.

The Rescue and Restore campaign is a national campaign that has enlisted the help of national groups to help disseminate the public awareness campaign materials. The campaign includes paid electronic and print media advertisements, and a PSA effort that includes PSAs developed by the United Nations and adapted for broadcast in the United States by HHS.

The campaign is also launching intensive local coalition efforts and supplementing existing efforts. The initial areas in which such efforts are being launched are Atlanta, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Central Florida, Newark, Seattle, Portland, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Milwaukee. The campaign will continue to roll out local efforts in urban and rural communities across the country.

A critical component of the Rescue and Restore campaign is the toll-free Trafficking Information and Referral Hotline, 1-888-373-7888, which helps connect victims of trafficking to Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) that help victims in their local area. The hotline will help intermediaries determine whether someone is a victim of human trafficking, connect victims of trafficking to local resources, and coordinate with local social service organizations to protect and serve the victims of trafficking. The hotline is operated by Covenant House, the nation's largest privately funded international child welfare agency; it has a well-trained and experienced staff and 16 years of experience operating the NINELINE crisis hotline for at-risk youth.

The hotline is being promoted through print and radio advertisements tailored for specific ethnic audiences including Hispanic, Russian, Polish and Asian. Additionally, the campaign is promoting the hotline through the United Nations PSAs. Through June 2004, the PSAs have played on 30 stations in 21 markets reaching more than 2.9 million people.

The Rescue and Restore campaign Web site www.acf.hhs.gov/trafficking is also available to provide information and resources about human trafficking and the campaign. The following informational materials can be accessed from the Web site:

Unaccompanied Alien Children

Section 462 of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 transferred functions under U.S. immigration law regarding care and placement of unaccompanied alien children from the former Immigration and Naturalization Service to the Office of Refugee Resettlement. The Division of Unaccompanied Children's Services (DUCS) was subsequently created in March 2003 within ORR to take over placement and care functions from INS. Apprehension and enforcement responsibilities remain with the Department of Homeland Security/Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

ORR is guided by the principles that all unaccompanied alien children should be treated with dignity, respect, and special concern for their particular vulnerability, and they shall be provided care and services free from discrimination based on race, religion, national origin, sex, handicap, or political beliefs. ORR's goals are to place unaccompanied alien children in the least restrictive setting appropriate to their age and special needs, and, where a viable option, to reunite with family members while they are in immigration proceedings.

Unaccompanied alien children (UAC) are minors that have been apprehended by Department of Homeland Security border patrol agents and immigration officials at ports of entry or other places within the U.S. borders. According to section 462 of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, a UAC is a child under the age of 18 who has arrived in the U.S. without parents or legal guardians or does not have a parent or legal guardian available to care for him/her, and he/she does not have legal immigration status in the U.S. All UAC cared for by ORR are referred to the DUCS program by DHS officials.

Most UAC in ORR's care are Central American males between the ages of 15 and 17 who come to the U.S. to join family and work. They are fleeing poor socioeconomic conditions, gang victimization, abuse, neglect, abandonment, or other trauma in their home countries. Though the majority arrive from Central America, other children come from China, Haiti, Africa, and Eastern Europe. All UAC remain in Federal custody until they are released to family members in the U.S., are removed or deported from the U.S. by Department of Homeland Security officials, reach 18 years of age, or are granted legal immigration status by an immigration court.

In FY 2003, ORR placed and cared for approximately 5,000 UAC, with an average of 500 in care at any given point in time. Most UAC came into ORR's care from Department of Homeland Security apprehensions along the borders of Arizona and Texas with Mexico. During FY 2003, the average length of stay in ORR custody was approximately 45 days before a child was released to family or another adult sponsor or until he/she was removed to his/her home country. Approximately 40 percent of UAC in ORR's care during FY 2003 returned voluntarily to their countries of origin or were removed or deported by immigration officials.

ORR's responsibilities under Section 462 of the Homeland Security Act are the following:

ORR maintains a network of shelter care facilities, most of which are located close to high apprehension areas, such as Arizona, Texas, Florida, and California. Facilities are state licensed and must meet ORR requirements. All of ORR's shelter care facilities provide children with education, health care, socialization/recreation, mental health services, family reunification, access to legal services, and case management. If a child requires a higher level of care due to a documented criminal history, he/she will be placed in a staff secure or secure care facility.

For children with special needs (young age, pregnant/parent, mental health concerns), or who have no viable sponsor to reunite with while going through immigration proceedings, long-term foster care is available through the UAC foster care program network. In addition, some of ORR's shelter care facilities also operate short-term foster care homes.

In FY 2003 ORR staff consisted of project officers and case managers at the headquarters office in addition to eight field coordinators who are hired and managed through cooperative agreements with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS). The field coordinators, located in Arizona, four sites in Texas, Miami, Chicago, Seattle, and California, make recommendations to ORR on the viability of a UAC sponsor and the child's safe reunification. Additionally, they meet with UAC regularly, identify alternate placement options, and assist ORR in development of policies and procedures.

In FY 2003, ORR-

U.S. Repatriation Program

The U.S. Repatriation Program was established by Title XI, Section 1113 of the Social Security Act (Assistance for United States Citizens Returned from Foreign Countries), in 1935 to provide temporary assistance to U.S. citizens and their dependents who have been returned to the U.S. from a foreign country because of destitution, illness, war, threat of war, or similar crisis and are without available resources. The Program also provides similar assistance during emergency evacuations and repatriation operations or group evacuations in foreign posts.

The Department of State (DOS) requests assistance from the U.S. Repatriation Program for national emergency evacuations and also certifies that citizens and their dependents are eligible for repatriation assistance and returns them to the U.S. Upon arrival in the U.S., services for repatriates are the responsibility of the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The Secretary has delegated this responsibility to the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) and to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) within ACF.

ORR has entered into a cooperative agreement with International Social Service - United States of America (ISS-USA) for the carrying out of the program for individual repatriates. ISS-USA administers a nationwide non-emergency program; maintains the network of local providers in the State governments and in the private sector; trains and guides workers in procedures for complex cases such as, unaccompanied minors, individuals with serious medical or mental problems, incompetent adults, and victims of domestic violence; provides guidance on the information of specific benefits with which all local providers may not be familiar, such as Medicaid, Medicare, Supplementary Security Income (SSI) and veterans' benefits; and consults with ORR and Overseas Citizens Services (OCS) for services to clients who have a criminal history in the U.S.

ISS-USA provides services to repatriated U.S. citizens and their dependents which include travel within the U.S. and temporary monetary assistance to those who experience unexpected problems abroad and who need assistance upon their return to the U.S. to resume their lives as quickly as possible. Similar assistance, as well as evaluation and possible hospitalization, is arranged for repatriates who are mentally ill.

ORR provides assistance during national emergency evacuations and repatriation operations to U.S. citizens and their dependents outside the U.S. during an emergency crisis or group evacuation. ISS-USA is requested to serve as a point of guidance and technical assistance to States as the repatriates arrive and to provide consultation on services to unaccompanied minors and mentally ill in their States of destination.

During 2003, ORR convened conference calls to key States to alert them to the possibility of repatriation of U.S. citizens from countries surrounding Iraq where military actions might have placed American citizens at risk. These conference calls reviewed the political climates in the Middle East and Korea as well as the SARS epidemic in the Far East. While ORR and States prepared for emergency reception, no emergency evacuation occurred.