because it was safer to process them for resettlement farther away from the Somali border. Resettlement in the United States In 1999, the United States classified the Bantu refugees from Somalia as a priority and the United States Department of State first began what has been described as the most ambitious resettlement plan ever from Africa, with thousands of Bantus scheduled for resettlement in America. In 2003, the first Bantu immigrants began to arrive in U.S. cities, and by 2007, around 13,000 had been resettled to cities throughout the United States with the help of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the U.S. State Department, and refugee resettlement agencies across the country. Among the resettlement destinations, it is known that Salt Lake City, Utah received about 1,000 Bantus. Other cities in the southwest such as Denver, Colorado, San Antonio, Texas, and Tucson, Arizona have received a few thousand as well. In New England, Manchester, New Hampshire and Burlington, Vermont were also destinations selected for resettlement of several hundred. The documentary film Rain in a Dry Land chronicles this journey, with stories of Bantu refugees resettled in Springfield, Massachusetts and Atlanta, Georgia. Plans to resettle the Bantu in smaller towns, such as Holyoke, Massachusetts and Cayce, South Carolina, were scrapped after local protests. There are also communities of several hundred to a thousand Bantu people in cities that also have high concentrations of ethnic Somalis such as the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, Columbus, Ohio, Atlanta, San Diego, Boston, Pittsburgh, and Seattle, with a notable presence of about 1,000 Bantus in Lewiston, Maine. Making Refuge follows Somali Bantus' strenuous journey towards eventual resettlement in Lewiston and details several families' stories of relocating there. Upon their resettlement in Lewiston, however, Bantus were met with a great amount of hostility from local Lewiston residents. In 2002, former Mayor Laurier Raymond wrote an open letter to Somali Bantu residents in an effort to dissuade them from further relocation to Lewiston. He proclaimed their resettlement to the town had become a "burden" on the community and predicted an overall negative impact on the town's social services and resources. In 2003, members of a white supremacist group demonstrated in support of the mayor's letter, which prompted a counter-demonstration of about 4,000 people at Bates College, as chronicled in documentary film The Letter. Despite such adversity, the Somali Bantu community in central Maine has continued to flourish