Bhutanese Community in Maryland

The Bhutanese community in Maryland is a mid-sized diaspora population concentrated in two very different corners of the state: the post-industrial east side of Baltimore, where refugee resettlement built a compact working-class enclave from 2008 onward, and the affluent Washington suburbs of Montgomery and Prince George's counties, where a smaller Bhutanese population is embedded in the much larger Nepali-American community of the DC region. Almost all Bhutanese Marylanders are Lhotshampa — Nepali-speaking southern Bhutanese who were expelled from Bhutan between 1990 and 1993, spent up to two decades in refugee camps in eastern Nepal, and were resettled in the United States under the Third-Country Resettlement Programme that began in 2008.

Maryland is not one of the primary destination states for Bhutanese refugees in the way that Ohio, Pennsylvania or Texas are, but its combined Bhutanese and Nepali population is substantial because of the state's mature refugee infrastructure and its two very different regional labour markets. Roughly 20,000 Nepali Americans are estimated to live in Maryland, with almost 10,000 in the Baltimore metropolitan area.^[1] The specifically Bhutanese-origin share of that population is smaller and harder to count, because many Lhotshampa carried Nepali-language identity documents out of the camps and are recorded in US administrative data as Nepali rather than Bhutanese.

Baltimore: the primary hub

Baltimore is where Maryland's Bhutanese story is most visible. The city's refugee infrastructure is anchored by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Baltimore, which opened a resettlement office in 1999 and has since resettled more than 20,000 refugees drawn from Iraq, Bhutan, Burma, Afghanistan, Syria, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and other origin countries.^[3] The IRC's Baltimore Resettlement Center is located in Highlandtown, an east-side neighbourhood that was historically home to Eastern European and Greek immigrants and that has become, over the past two decades, one of the main refugee-receiving corridors on the US East Coast.

Bhutanese arrivals in Baltimore began in earnest in 2008, in the first full year of the US resettlement programme for the camps in Nepal. They were placed into an already-existing ecosystem of ESL classes, employment counselling, health screenings, case management and interpreter services that the IRC had built for earlier cohorts of Burmese and Iraqi refugees. Chandra Bajgai, a former Lhotshampa refugee himself, was hired by the IRC's Baltimore resettlement centre as a caseworker and community liaison in the early years of the programme, and was also an early organiser of the Association of Bhutanese in America.^[4] Bajgai's work at the IRC illustrates a pattern seen in most Bhutanese-American enclaves: the first generation of refugees rapidly moves into paid positions at the same agencies that resettled them, because they are the only workers fluent in both Nepali and English and trusted inside the community.

Beyond the IRC's resettlement programming, Bhutanese refugees in Baltimore have been visible in the IRC's New Roots urban-agriculture initiative, in which refugee families grow food crops on raised beds beside the resettlement centre in Highlandtown. Bhutanese gardeners have contributed bitter gourd, ground cherries, mustard greens and other crops familiar from the camps in Jhapa, alongside Kurdish, Sudanese, Salvadoran and Ethiopian participants.^[5] Bhutanese refugee health needs are served in part by the Baltimore Medical System, whose Refugee Health Program provides initial medical screenings and ongoing primary care for new arrivals in the city.

Occupational concentrations in Baltimore follow the pattern seen in other Bhutanese-American enclaves. The first generation has clustered in hospitality work around the Inner Harbor and the Baltimore–Washington International Airport corridor, in warehousing and light industry in the Dundalk and Middle River industrial belts, in nursing-home and in-home care work across the Baltimore suburbs, and in small retail — Nepali grocery shops, halal and South Asian food stores, and small restaurants along Eastern Avenue and the Highlandtown corridor. A second generation is moving through Baltimore City Schools and Baltimore County Public Schools and into the University of Maryland and Towson University systems.

Montgomery County and the Washington suburbs

The second Maryland cluster is in the Washington suburbs of Montgomery and Prince George's counties, particularly the corridor running from Silver Spring through Wheaton, Rockville and Gaithersburg. This is one of the densest Nepali-American communities on the US East Coast, but its composition is different from Baltimore's. The DC-suburb Nepali population is predominantly made up of professional Nepali immigrants — doctors, engineers, World Bank and IMF staff, federal contractors, graduate students at Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland — rather than resettled refugees from the Bhutanese camps. The Lhotshampa-origin share of that community is a minority, often made up of Bhutanese refugees who first arrived in other states under the resettlement programme and then moved to Maryland as secondary migrants for better wages or to rejoin family.

For the suburban Montgomery County cohort, the main resettlement agency is Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital Area (LSSNCA), which operates across the DC–Maryland–Virginia region and has resettled Bhutanese families alongside larger arrivals of Afghans, Congolese, Eritreans and Syrians. Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington also operates refugee-facing programmes in the Maryland DC suburbs.

Religious life for the Montgomery County Bhutanese community overlaps heavily with the broader DC-area Hindu infrastructure. The Sri Siva Vishnu Temple in Lanham, Prince George's County, and the Hindu Society of Metropolitan Washington serve the region's Nepali and Bhutanese Hindu population for major observances including Dashain, Tihar and Shivaratri, even though neither temple is specifically Bhutanese in origin. Montgomery County Public Schools — one of the larger and better-resourced school districts in the United States — has been a significant draw for Bhutanese-American families with school-age children deciding where to settle within the state.

Resettlement infrastructure

Maryland has one of the more developed state-level refugee infrastructures in the country. The Maryland Office for Refugees and Asylees (MORA), housed inside the Maryland Department of Human Services, coordinates and administers the state's share of federal refugee programming and contracts with local resettlement agencies. MORA reports having resettled roughly 7,000 refugees and 4,000 asylees since 2010, with Nepali Bhutanese listed among the largest origin groups alongside Burmese, Iraqi, Ethiopian and Cameroonian arrivals.^[6] MORA programmes include Refugee Cash Assistance, Refugee Medical Assistance, employment services, English-language and vocational training, youth programming and case management, all delivered through contracted local providers.

Three voluntary agencies (VOLAGs) handle most of the actual resettlement work on the ground. The IRC in Baltimore is the most prominent for Bhutanese families. Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital Area serves the Washington suburbs. Catholic Charities of Baltimore operates the Esperanza Center and a separate refugee resettlement programme that has received families from Bhutan and elsewhere. Frederick, a smaller city in western Maryland, has received refugee arrivals through LSSNCA.

Maryland's political environment under Republican Governor Larry Hogan (2015–2023) remained cooperative with federal refugee programming, and under Democratic Governor Wes Moore (from January 2023) the state has adopted a sanctuary-leaning posture on immigration enforcement.

Community institutions

The Baltimore Association of Nepalese in America (BANA), founded in 2004 and incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is the oldest and most visible Nepali-speaking community organisation in Maryland. Based at 2906 Taylor Avenue in Parkville, on the northern edge of Baltimore City, BANA hosts Dashain, Tihar, Holi and Nepali New Year celebrations, coordinates citizenship and voter-registration drives, runs youth programmes and maintains ties with city and state officials.^[1] BANA is a broadly Nepali organisation rather than a specifically Bhutanese-refugee one, but it has served as the main public-facing organisation for Lhotshampa families in the Baltimore metro in the absence of a dedicated Bhutanese-Maryland association.

The Bhutan Baptist Church of Baltimore, at 5310 Hazelwood Avenue in north-east Baltimore, is the most specifically Bhutanese institution in Maryland. It was established in 2009 by the Reverend Samuel Cho, a Korean-born Southern Baptist missionary, as an outgrowth of an earlier house fellowship. Cho had started the Nepal Baptist Church of Baltimore in 2005 after meeting a Nepali couple in a Baltimore restaurant in 2004; when the first wave of Bhutanese refugees arrived in Baltimore in 2008, Cho went to the airport to meet arriving families and invited them into a separate Bhutanese-language fellowship, which became a constituted church in 2010. Cho and his wife Young are credited with founding the first Nepalese and Bhutanese Baptist churches in the United States.^[7] The congregation worships in Nepali, with sermons and scripture reading in Nepali script.

A Baltimore Bhutanese Committee is listed in directories of Maryland multicultural organisations, though it has little online presence and should not be confused with BANA.^[8] The Hindu majority of the Lhotshampa community in Baltimore worships informally in home-based gatherings and at the DC-area temples.

2025 ICE enforcement and community impact

The nationwide 2025 wave of arrests and deportations of Bhutanese Americans — concentrated in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Texas — has been felt in Maryland even though no Maryland-specific Bhutanese deportation case has been publicly documented. For Maryland's Bhutanese community, the effect has been a sharp rise in fear, reduced participation in public life, and heavy engagement with Know Your Rights training run by the IRC, BANA and regional legal-aid providers.^[9]

Distinctive features of the Maryland cohort

Three characteristics distinguish Maryland's Bhutanese community from the larger enclaves in Columbus, Harrisburg or Akron. First, the split between a working-class refugee cohort in east Baltimore and a professional-adjacent cohort in the Washington suburbs is unusually sharp, reflecting the state's dual economy. Second, the Baltimore cohort sits inside a multi-origin refugee neighbourhood — Highlandtown — rather than in a single-origin ethnic enclave, so Bhutanese social life in Baltimore is routinely conducted alongside Burmese, Iraqi and African neighbours rather than in isolation. Third, Maryland's proximity to the federal government, its strong suburban school systems, and its sanctuary-leaning political posture under Governor Moore have made the state a relatively stable landing ground for Bhutanese families.

See also

• Bhutanese refugee crisis
• Lhotshampa
• Third-country resettlement programme
• Association of Bhutanese in America
• Bhutanese community in Pennsylvania
• Bhutanese community in Virginia
• Bhutan–United States relations
• Building Community in New Hampshire
• Bhutanese Community in Minnesota
• Bhutanese Community in Florida
• Bhutanese Community in California
• Bhutanese Community in Phoenix, Arizona

References

1. Baltimore Association of Nepalese in America — Who We Are
2. "Korean couple honored for Nepalese & Bhutanese plants" — Baptist Press
3. International Rescue Committee — Baltimore, MD
4. "For resettled refugees in Baltimore, many needs, one destination" — UNHCR
5. "Gardens help refugees connect to new land" — CBS Baltimore
6. Maryland Office for Refugees and Asylees — Department of Human Services
7. "Korea-born missionary opens heart to Nepalese, Bhutanese" — Baptist Press
8. Maryland Multicultural Organizations Directory — Governor's Commission on Hispanic Affairs / Multicultural Council
9. "This refugee's family faced persecution in Bhutan. Now, he could be deported there" — NPR