On July 2, a 29-year-old man who served as an interpreter for American troops in Afghanistan, arrived in Jacksonville along with his wife and their 18-month-old daughter.

They are the latest of more than 6,000 refugees to be welcomed to our area by World Relief Jacksonville, part of a Christian humanitarian organization headquartered in Baltimore.

It turns out they also will be the last.

World Relief has had an office in Jacksonville since 1990. That will end July 31.

The eight employees and two volunteers in the Jacksonville office were told to come to a meeting at 11 a.m. last Thursday. When they gathered on the second floor of a warehouse behind a gas station on University Boulevard near Interstate 95, they were given the news: The national office has decided to close this location.

“It’s heartbreaking,” said Brenda Boydston, resettlement director for the Jacksonville office.

It’s also a sign of the times.

Two other local organizations, Lutheran Social Services and Catholic Charities, will continue to help refugees settle in North Florida. But with the Trump administration reducing the number of refugees the United States accepts to historic lows, the nation’s longstanding refugee resettlement program has changed dramatically, leading to layoffs and closures at offices around the country.

This is a piece of U.S. immigration overshadowed by the politics and media coverage of what’s happening at the Mexico border. It involves refugees in foreign countries undergoing some of the most stringent vetting of any U.S. arrivals, typically waiting two years, from application to arrival, to enter the country.

Not long ago, nearly 1,500 new refugees came to Duval County in a year, with World Relief and a staff of more than 30 helping about 500 refugees start a new life here.

In the last three years, that slowed to a trickle, then to barely a drip — 161 arrivals in 2017, 84 arrivals in 2018 and three arrivals in 2019.

This is what led to Andrew Timbie, World Relief senior director of U.S. operations, coming from Baltimore to the Jacksonville office Monday morning.

Just a few years ago, when you opened the door on the ground floor of the warehouse off University Boulevard, you walked over a floor mat that said “welcome” in a variety of languages and entered a hallway filled with people from all over the world.

On Monday, the hall was silent, lined with empty chairs. A sign at the desk pointed visitors upstairs.

When Timbie met staff, it wasn’t what you might expect from an encounter between a representative from a headquarters and the staff of an office that he’s there to shut down.

There were handshakes, hugs and mutual praise. One employee said it felt like a wake, sadness for the loss mixed with fond memories.

“Our home office has done a wonderful job trying to deal with all of this,” Boydston said.

Timbie praised the Jacksonville office, along with supportive local churches and volunteers, for all they have done in the last 30 years. He said the city has a rich refugee history and the closure wasn’t a reflection of their work.

“It’s really reflective of the volatility of the immigration program right now,” he said. “We lack the financial capacity to sustain our ministry in this particular community. We have to consolidate to preserve the entire program.”

World Relief has about 20 offices nationwide. Jacksonville was the only one in Florida. It will join a growing list of offices from other refugee resettlement agencies that have closed.

Timbie predicts this is one number that will continue to grow.

In 2016, the United States welcomed about 85,000 refugees — a figure that’s close to the average for the last 40 years.

Ever since then, the Trump administration has dropped that annual figure again and again. At the current pace, the United States won’t come close to hitting the 30,000 ceiling set for this current fiscal year.

In recent years, some local and state leaders also have pushed back against refugee plans.

Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry jumped into a national debate not long after taking office in 2015. After the Paris attacks, Curry wrote a letter to this area’s congressional delegation, opposing a plan to accept more Syrians fleeing war in their homeland, saying he was “more committed than ever to do everything I can to eliminate threats to our city’s safety.”

A Syrian passport found at the scene in Paris turned out to be fake. And the organizations involved with refugee resettlement pointed out that the intense vetting was working, that more than 3 million refugees had entered the country through this program and none had committed a deadly terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

Still, there has been a shift since then — and some of it has come from a group that has been at World Relief’s core for most of its 75-year existence, Evangelical Christians.

Timbie, the director of U.S. operations, carefully avoids making political statements. What he does talk about beyond numbers and facts is this connection between faith and World Relief’s mission.

“The reasons we do these things — the reason we’re even involved with working with immigrants — it’s sprung from the Christian concept that all people are created in the image of God,” he said. “And we see throughout the Bible that it was very intentional that God’s command was to welcome and love the stranger.”

He said that while World Relief no longer will be here after July 31, the national office hopes the hundreds of volunteers and dozens of churches that have been involved will continue to support the refugees who call Jacksonville home.

He says he hopes they will add to what Elaine Carson has done.

•••

Carson happened to be in the office last Thursday. The current staff took comfort in her being there when they heard the news. She took comfort in being there, not having to hear it second hand.

In many ways, she is the face of World Relief Jacksonville.

People all over town know her by a nickname that can be traced back to her husband being known as Pastor Carson at a local church — and her becoming Mrs. P.

In the late 1980s, she started working with refugees with Lutheran Social Services. In 1990, she became the first director of the World Relief office in Jacksonville. She did that for more than 25 years. Even after she retired at age 75, she has continued to volunteer.

It just happened that Mrs. P has been the main volunteer working with the Afghan family that arrived July 2.

“Precious people,” she said. “When I met them I said, ‘I’m Mrs. P with World Relief and before anything else, I want to thank you for the service to our troops.’ He said, ‘Listen to me, we thank you for protecting our country.'”

She recalled this while sitting in a large room in the World Relief offices. The room was stuffy, the air-conditioning struggling to keep up with the summer heat. Boxes from a recent children’s camp filled the room. On a table nearby, there was a stack of paperback copies of “Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compassion and Truth in the Immigration Debate.”

She gave a copy to U.S. Rep. John Rutherford. She said she wishes she could give a copy to President Trump and talk to him, maybe tell him about a few of the refugees — 8,069, counting her time at Lutheran Social Services — she’s been involved with through the years.

She is, of course, saddened by the World Relief office closure. She says she’s more saddened by the thought of all the displaced people out there. Although if they made it here, she worries about what they’d find.

“This is not the America I grew up with,” she said.

She and the staff will continue to work in the coming days, helping their last family make a fresh start, while bringing World Relief’s time here to an official end.

Walking through the hallway upstairs, Boydston pointed out that they’ve already started taking pictures off the wall.

A painted mural remains. It has green mountains, a sunrise, a collection of flags and a Bible verse, Jeremiah 29:11.

“For I know I have plans for you … plans to give you hope and a future.”

mwoods@jacksonville.com,

(904) 359-4212