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GREENSBORO — In a final blow to the city’s oldest refugee resettlement agency, Lutheran Family Services of the Carolinas will shut down the legal office that for 20 years helped reunite parents, children and spouses torn apart by civil war and ethnic cleansing.

In an announcement shared Monday with local clergy and refugee sponsors, the agency’s executive director called the move, effective Sept. 30, “exclusively a financial decision.”

LFS, which has operated in the Triad since 1979, halted its refugee arrivals to the Triad in February, citing economic conditions. That move came after a spate of problems with serving clients.

For Greensboro, which absorbed up to a third of the state’s incoming refugees, the six-person LFS legal staff here handled 915 cases in 2009, the bulk of them family reunifications.

“Unfortunately,” the Rev. Laura Benson, the agency’s Raleigh-based director wrote in a memo circulated Monday, “LFS can no longer shoulder the gap between the federal contract and modest client fee income collected and the actual cost of this specialized work.”

These cases, known as “I-730s,” are not only specialized and drawn-out, taking an average of two to five years; they are often desperate in nature and must be filed within two years of arrival.

The story of Greensboro transplant Marie Bombongo, a refugee from the Congo, defines “I-730” in human terms: Before fleeing her home, which had descended into chaos, she was brutally beaten and assaulted by rebels in front of her family, and saw her husband beheaded.

The choice to flee with her two sons to a refugee camp and then to the U.S. was simple, but for one problem: They were separated from her daughter, age 12. That agonizing moment of truth — and the feeling of loss and guilt that is compounded once the parent reached safety in the U.S. — seems to be replayed in one refugee story after another.

“If we take those legal (reunification) services away, you’ve compounded the problem,” said Gerry Chapman, a local immigration attorney. “These refugees are going to have that feeling of helplessness, guilt, remorse forever.”

Though Chapman has practiced since 1995 and does strictly immigration work, he does not know how to do an
I-730 and would not take such a difficult case for free.

Refugees, by their nature, often lack funds and documentation to prove their next of kin, and DNA tests must
be ordered — a difficult prospect in faraway countries at war.

Benson said the legal staff is funded by federal and state grants, but she projected an  $80,000 deficit in the budget next year. She said LFS would continue representing the clients through Sept. 30, and would inform refugees of its withdrawal of legal services.

Meanwhile, Benson wrote, “LFS is committed to doing everything possible to aid the community in identifying and leveraging new resources” to fill the gap that would be left by the closing of the office.

Chapman was uncertain that such resources exist.

“Even if all the private law firms were not tapped out on pro bono work, what you’ve done is dispersed it and sent it to people who don’t know how to do it,” he said.

In the 1990s, LFS played the lead role in turning the city into what observers likened to a “little Ellis Island.”

But a combination of staff turnover, scarce resources and a grim employment outlook for newcomers resulted in turmoil at the agency.

Its refugee clients are being moved to other resettlement agencies in the Triad. When that is complete, LFS refugee work here will cease and will be limited to Raleigh and Columbia, S.C.

Contact Lorraine Ahearn at 373-7334 or lorraine.ahearn@news-record.com