Many refugees in Greeley, Colorado are Muslims from Somalia or other parts of East Africa, who, like those in Garden City Kansas, work in the meatpacking industry.
As Colorado Public Radio reports, Burmese refugee Sultan Ahmed thought he would be seeing his family in less than a year, but President Donald Trump’s executive order on refugees and immigration halted all that and Ahmed was told it would take two or more years to bring his family to Greeley.
Ahmed came to Greeley about a year ago through a United Nations refugee resettlement program. He is part of the Rohingya community, a Muslim minority group that lives without legal protection in Myanmar, the country Ahmed fled from after he was extorted and tortured by police.
He is now a community navigator at Greeley’sGlobal Center for Refugees.
With the federal judge’s ruling halting enforcement of key parts of Trump’s immigration order, Ahmed’s plans are back in motion, as refugees are again being resettled in the U.S. and travelers of seven Muslim-majority countries can enter the country, but 57 percent of Greeley’s population voted for Trump, so the legal battle over immigration has revealed a deep political divide in the area.