“I left everything behind in Syria just for my safety and my kids’ safety,” she said. “Where are we supposed to go? Can Donald Trump answer me that question? I don’t think so...Sometimes I think if we are not welcome here, where can we go? I don’t find the answer and that’s really hard.”

The president’s message has been that A’s family and others like hers do belong here.

“Nearly four centuries after the Mayflower set sail, the world is still full of pilgrims—men and women who want nothing more than the chance for a safer, better future for themselves and their families,” Obama said recently in a rebuke of the anti-Syrian fervor. “What makes America, America is that we offer that chance. We turn Lady Liberty’s light to the world, and widen our circle of concern to say that all God’s children are worthy of our compassion and care. That’s part of what makes this the greatest country on Earth.”

In Connecticut, Malloy expressed faith that the U.S. could separate the dangerous from the desperate.

“Women were raped. Children were damaged. People have lost limbs. We have an obligation as Americans to do our part in those situations, but do it at a very high standard with a very good background system, which I think the federal government has,” he told Eyewitness News.

The Democrat made headlines earlier this year when he personally greeted a Syrian family that had been scheduled to arrive in Indianapolis, Indiana, but was diverted to New Haven, Connecticut, after Governor Mike Pence ordered state agencies to halt resettlement activities after the Paris attacks. French authorities later found a falsified Syrian passport near the body of one of the suicide bombers.

“I was thankful we have a governor who was saying welcome. Happy to be in a state where we have that kind of leadership,” Schiavino-Narvaez, the Hartford schools chief, said. “The people who come to our door are children and we have an obligation to educate every child that comes to us in the highest quality manner as possible. Whoever comes to us, we need to give them a great education.”

The Hartford Public Schools committee formed to deal with refugee students will incorporate members of the district’s policy, communications, family, and community engagement teams as well as Catholic Charities managers.

The group may work to identify a school with a higher Muslim-student population that has space for new Syrian students. Other questions facing the committee are whether the district will need to hire more teaching staff with bilingual skills—state law requires that districts provide bilingual education whenever a school has 20 or more students whose dominant language is not English. An influx of new students could cause a ripple in busing plans for the roughly 21,200-student district. Hartford Public Schools’ managers are also preparing to find additional money to address students’ other academic needs that could arise.