Part III: I worked at a Safe Haven during Operation Allies Welcome. IRC’s failures endangered thousands of vulnerable refugees

(IRC Staff Experience — continued)

In late 2021, I was hired to work at a Safe Haven as part of Operation Allies Welcome (OAW). The federal government had appointed IRC to manage the resettlement process for newly-arrived Afghan refugees. My job was to engage with these “guests” living at the military base, pending permanent resettlement to various communities around the country. Having worked at a different base during the early days of the mission, I was looking forward to this role.

I was born in Afghanistan and speak Pashto and Dari fluently, which became invaluable in my role. I understood these people, their hopes and challenges. I also had a 10-year background relevant to this position. In short: I was uniquely qualified for the role. When I arrived on base, it became clear that this carried little value.

I quickly discovered that IRC operates differently than what you’d expect of an international aid organization. I expected a base level of cultural competency and prioritization of safeguarding protocols. Imagine my absolute shock when I came across blatant racism from the top-down, incompetence and cronyism run amok and complete disrespect for the Afghan staff and the refugees.

Afghan women were trafficked on IRC’s watch and people with severe medical conditions didn’t have their cases elevated, resulting in at least one death. The miscarriage rate was alarmingly high and guests came to us frequently in mental health crises. The protection officer ignored their suicide threats and young women were put in danger and resettled away from their families (against their wishes). It was a shock to my system and when I raised the alarm one too many times, I was sent home. To this day, no one at IRC has been held accountable. That needs to change.

Part III

IRC staff members were involved in the sexual exploitation of refugee women

The most shocking part of my experience was the cavalier way in which sexual harassment and abuse were tolerated. During my first week on the job, a staffer casually mentioned that several IRC staff members had been involved in a prostitution scandal involving refugee women on base.

IRC staff members traded necessities and financial support for sexual favors from these women. Several staff members were caught taking women off-base to motels. To my knowledge, no one was charged with a crime and the perpetrators worked on base for well over two months before they were let go.

I later learned from the women occupying the “college girls” barracks that they were subject to frequent sexual harassment and propositioning by IRC staff. I took down numerous names of both IRC staff and interpreters working for a private contractor called Mission Essential (MEP). When I shared an extensive report with my IRC site lead about this and other safeguarding violations, she seemed unmoved. Weeks went by and nothing happened.

Eventually, I tracked down the military officer in charge of interpreters and shared my report. He took action almost immediately and several MEP interpreters were let go. The IRC staffers in question continued to work on base until a month later, when IRC’s internal Ethics & Compliance (EC) team came down from New York to investigate sexual harassment allegations made in September.

At this point, none of the IRC program managers or HQ staff had visited the base. They were making crucial policy decisions without knowing how the base operated. They didn’t even bother to hire qualified staff to run things smoothly.

The many safeguarding failures under IRC’s watch

IRC’s biggest failure and the most alarming issue I came across was in regards to safeguarding. IRC prides itself on being a leader in safeguarding, which entails a series of protocols meant to protect guests from exploitation and abuse. Yet, the on-site protection officer was completely unequipped for the job. He seemed as confused about being hired for the role as the rest of the staff. “I’m truly, very confused” is something he uttered at least once a day.

The man in question was not Afghan and lacked the cultural competency for the role. He was a psychologist who had worked with inner city kids and seemed utterly baffled about how to create and implement “battle drills” for managing instances of sexual assault and physical abuse. When he failed to provide any guidance or input to the inter-departmental working group, two military officers commandeered the meeting and disinvited him. IRC should have been at the forefront of that group, yet it became clear that the protection officer was ill-equipped to carry out the role he was hired for.

IRC’s protection officer arrived two weeks before me and had a closed-door policy. Literally — he kept his door locked most of the time and he didn’t answer when staff came knocking to flag cases for him.

Despite my not having a protection background, the staff frequently came to me with their concerns. There were multiple young women who wanted to leave base because they’d been there too long. Some of their families had been resettled already and these women were alone. One of them, an 18-year-old girl, was living in open barracks with teenage boys — a major violation of safeguarding rules.

Strange men on the internet had offered to reunite these women with their families and offer financial support. At least two women were promised passage to Canada, where family reunification would be easier. These cases reeked of human trafficking and yet our protection officer did nothing except ask the women, “Do you feel comfortable leaving with this individual?” When they answered affirmatively, he dropped the matter: “I have no protection concerns.”

When the husband of a doctor on base offered one family a ride to Chicago, a violation of the General Orders, he saw no issues with that. When a married Army Captain had an affair with a 19-year-old refugee woman and offered to take her off base to live with him, he took no issue with that either. Eventually, the generalists and interpreters went to the relevant military authorities, who reprimanded him.

But the most heartbreaking case involved a 4-year-old child with a disability. Her condition was so severe that she couldn’t eat most solid foods. Cases like hers should have been flagged and expedited so the family could be moved off-base sooner. Instead, she languished for nearly five months on that base, consuming nothing but nutritional shakes the entire time.

It was inhumane and an utter failure on IRC’s part to keep the family on base as long as they did. The inexperienced program deputy would always say, “There’s nothing we can do about these cases.” This was her go-to response when young women were separated from their families, sometimes ending up in different states. It was her go-to when people with serious medical conditions complained of needing healthcare that was only accessible off-base.

When she left and her replacement came in from another Safe Haven, we learned there actually was something she could do. The new deputy, a woman of color with crisis management experience, took a more proactive role in contacting resettlement agencies to prioritize certain cases. We were all furious when we realized the previous deputy’s incompetence (and IRC’s hiring of her) had caused so many sick people to suffer unnecessarily.

Abuse was rampant

At one point, representatives from an unverified “non-profit” called the Afghan Welcome Home Project of Central Illinois began snooping around the base, asking IRC for copies of guests’ identification documents. We learned this group snuck on base and offered guests food and shelter in exchange for farm work. Our new program deputy called it “indentured servitude,” and yet neither she nor the protection officer stopped it. Almost a dozen individuals left with this non-profit, their fate unknown.

To this day, my former colleagues talk about how women were trafficked and the person IRC hired to protect them did nothing. At one point, a guest volunteer teacher was rumored to be having an affair with a student. This was after he was rumored to have groomed several underage girls and engaged in sexual intercourse with at least one.

The protection officer asked me to interview the student (something I was not trained to do). The girl insisted nothing inappropriate was going on, while her friend confided that the rumors might be true. I filed a report, recommending interviews with more students. The protection officer ignored my recommendation and stated, “I have no protection concerns.” It wasn’t until a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) staffer caught the teacher in a locked classroom with the student in question that he was barred from teaching.

In another instance, a woman was sexually assaulted in the sewing room by a male volunteer who was taking her measurements. This not only violated Afghan cultural norms but basic protection protocols. The woman refused to press charges out of fear of having her stay prolonged. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which was in charge of the sewing center, was not reprimanded over the incident. The IRC protection officer never confronted the USCCB lead about this safeguarding failure, nor did he provide them the safeguarding training they desperately needed.

Staff hit their breaking point

By December, the remaining IRC staffers at Fort McCoy were completely burned out. They worked six days a week, from 8:00 AM — 5:30 PM. When a new site lead came onboard, she scheduled daily 6 PM team “check-in” meetings that ran well past the hour. Everyone found these meetings tiring and preferred to relax over playing team-building games on Zoom. But again, there was little regard by IRC leadership for what the staff needed or endured on a daily basis.

Aside from the long hours, staff were also relegated to being pseudo-therapists for the increasingly agitated guests. Suicide threats were rampant among guests, especially in the winter months. They would come into IRC offices crying about their families back home who had no means of supporting themselves. These guests had planned to work and send money home within weeks of arrival. After four months on base, they were losing hope.

There was no guidance on how to handle emotional guests who threatened suicide, except to report them to the protection officer, who ignored them. The level of dysfunction bordered on dystopian and took a toll on many people’s mental health — guests and staff alike.

The program deputy (aka, “the intern”) decided the solution to all this was to further limit the information we were sharing with guests. She instructed staff to stop providing case updates, the only thing giving people hope amidst an overall sense of doom. This decision upset the staff but the “intern” didn’t care. She made her decision arbitrarily, without interacting with guests or aiming to understand their needs. When staff pushed back, one of them was fired. A member of the data team told the generalists to start tracking suicide threats and attempts on a dedicated spreadsheet.

A wellness coach was hired to help us cope with increasing levels of stress and anxiety.

The constant dysfunction and lack of mobility caused everyone a great deal of distress. IRC began limiting the number of excursions staff could take off-base with rental vehicles, so many of us were confined to the hotel on our sole day off every week.

The wellness coach created a “chill corner” and offered emotional support if we needed it. She was not a licensed therapist or equipped to deal with the emotional toll this mission was taking on staff. After a few weeks, it became clear that too many visits to the “chill corner” would be frowned upon. Eventually, the wellness coach was relegated to working as a generalist like the other non-Afghan staff. What little investment IRC made in staff’s mental health was quickly discarded.

One evening after work, my colleagues and I were discussing coping mechanisms. One of them said, completely seriously, “Whenever I see something messed up, I just dissociate. I just pretend this isn’t happening. That’s the best way to cope.” The group nodded thoughtfully. Leadership wasn’t equipping us to deal with the mental anguish of a stressed-out refugee population. This was sound advice for those who couldn’t make time to play with stress toys in the “chill corner.”

Right before Christmas, a young generalist went to our HR lead, crying about the lack of guidance on protection concerns. She’d been flagging cases for the protection officer and he was doing nothing. “I feel like someone is going to die and it’s going to be my fault.”

That same day a generalist informed me after work that a male guest, who had severe injuries and should have been resettled months ago, had threatened to kill himself. This had been his second suicide threat and rather than taking it seriously, the protection officer told her, “I know that guy. Don’t worry about it. He has made threats before.” Despite the late hour, we immediately called the public health team to conduct a wellness check. We also informed HQ, HR and our site lead of this severe protocol breach.

The next day, the technical advisor at HQ told me via Zoom that the protection officer would be sent home. She apologized for what our team had been going through and that the burden of protecting our guests had so often fallen on me. The HR lead later claimed he would be sent home after Christmas because he was getting a ride home for the holidays with a colleague and “It’s going to be an awkward drive if we fire him now.” It didn’t occur to anyone that they could fly him home or buy him a train ticket.

The new year came and the protection officer was still there. Even after he told staff during a training session that pedophilia was a normal part of Afghan culture, he stayed on. I had to clean up his messes constantly and rebut his racist commentary. He got to keep his job. To this day, he continues to work for IRC at a Safe Haven in Virginia.

The bitter end

My saga at Fort McCoy came to an end in January 2022 after I’d filed multiple ethics complaints. I was put on a call with HR, who thanked me for my service and told me how valuable I’d been to the mission. They informed me I’d be sent home on administrative leave so they could better investigate all of my allegations. They clarified that I was not being punished or retaliated against. It would just be “easier” for them to investigate if I was not around.

The base was set to close in two weeks and they clearly wanted me out of the way. I asked if any of the individuals I reported would be put on leave and was told no.

I filed an ethics complaint for retaliation and nothing happened. None of the witnesses I cited in the report were interviewed. One of the investigators was friends with several IRC staffers I reported. No one saw an issue with him carrying out the investigation.

When I pushed on this further, the case was reassigned to an investigator in Nairobi. He took two months to conduct an investigation that involved zero interviews with people who could have backed up my claims. Unsurprisingly, he cleared IRC of any wrongdoing, including my departure from the base.

To this day, the HR lead with no experience continues to work for IRC. The protection officer who allowed women to be abused, assaulted and trafficked was sent to Virginia to continue working with vulnerable populations. The only people held accountable by IRC were staffers who spoke out against unethical behavior and demanded IRC live up to the principles it claimed to uphold.

During my time working with IRC, it became clear the organization has serious operational flaws to address. The most egregious is a toxic culture where people of color and populations served by the organization are exploited and mistreated. IRC retaliates against those who speak out and promotes people who turn the other cheek. All of this happens under the banner of white supremacy cloaked in humanitarianism.

This is Part III of an IRC Staff Experience. Read Part I & Part II and follow @RACISTorg on Twitter for more staff testimonies.