Michigan: Pakistani Hotel Owner Alleges City Picked on Him for Housing Syrian Refugees

The point you should take away from this story is that in addition to new refugees being illegally housed (newly arriving refugees are required to be placed in their own apartments or homes upon arrival, not placed in hotel rooms) is that the Michigan Lutheran refugee resettlement agency was working with the Muslim hotel owner who the city says was already in violation of fire and other safety codes. 

Formerly Lutheran Social Services of Michigan

The Lutheran resettlement agency, Samaritas, is a subcontractor to Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service I wrote about yesterday. Check out that post and see the salaries you pay!

For newcomers to RRW, there are nine federal resettlement agencies largely funded by you, the taxpayers, who work for the US State Department.

Each of those has many subcontractors.  Your money flows through the nine down to hundreds of smaller organizations (like this Michigan subcontractor) making it very confusing for concerned citizens to know who it is that is changing their communities and it makes it almost impossible to follow the money.

(See LIRS other subcontractors below.)

From Detroit Free Press:

(emphasis below is mine)

Sterling Heights hotel in dispute with city alleges anti-Muslim, anti-refugee bias

The owner of a Sterling Heights hotel who is Muslim and of Pakistani descent alleges in a lawsuit filed Monday that city officials targeted and drove him out of business because of his faith and ethnicity and because he had housed about 200 Syrian refugees.

But on the same day, a Macomb County judge ruled against the hotel in a separate lawsuit that had been filed by city against the hotel, agreeing with the city that the hotel had failed to meet safety regulations.

Asad Malik, the owner of Wyndham Garden on 15 Mile and Van Dyke and president of the Pakistani Association of America, says in a lawsuit filed Monday in federal court in Detroit that after he started housing Syrian refugees in 2016, the city started to slap him with citations for violations of fire codes that he said other hotels with similar problems were not receiving. The hotel closed in September.

Malik purchased the hotel in 2014. He is an active member of the Muslim community in metro Detroit as a leader with the Islamic Association of Greater Detroit in Rochester Hills and meets with elected officials who have visited the mosque over the years.

The hotel was “opening her arms to refugees escaping from their war torn country,” his attorney Shereef Akeel, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of Sterling Hotels, told the Free Press. “The last thing you would think is then one of our own cites shutting the door on them. And now, my client has had to pay dearly for their act of generosity.”

The hotel started taking in Syrian refugees in November 2016 [during the big Obama flood of refugees—ed] working with Samaritas, formerly known as Lutheran Social Services of Michigan, which helps resettle refugees.

Malik said he then received an email from the Sterling Heights city manager asking him: “Are there any Syrian refugees being housed at the Wyndham? A resident is alleging such at our council meeting.”

The targeted harassment started after that….

Keep reading to learn more about the complaint.  The fallback position for a certain group of people is to cry DISCRIMINATION!

So where else is LIRS working to change America by changing the people?

This is something I need to do every time I write about a resettlement agency funded by you, in this case Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (the mothership) that passes its case loads to subcontractors like Samaritis.

Here is where you can find out if a refugee agency in your city is affiliated with LIRS.

Below is a screenshot of the full list of subcontractors.  Note how some have dropped the word “Lutheran” from their names.

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