U.S. orders agencies to stop spending federal funds on refugees

Myint Myint Sein’s 58-year-old cousin, his wife, and two children were only a few immunizations away from traveling to the United States as refugees when they found out last week that their medical appointments were canceled. They had been in a Thai refugee camp for 16 years.

“The refugee process is not easy,” said Sein, a refugee program specialist for World Relief. She arrived in the United States from Myanmar, also known as Burma, through the refugee resettlement program with most of her family in 2003. “They have been waiting for many years to start the process.”

President Donald Trump signed an executive order pausing the refugee resettlement program the day he took office. The move didn’t surprise World Relief staff members. Trump had promised to suspend the program while on the campaign trail. But what he did next caught the Christian humanitarian organization off guard.

At about 4 p.m. on Friday, World Relief said it received a memo from the State Department ordering it and the country’s nine other resettlement agencies to “stop all work and not incur any new costs” under the grant agreement that provides government funding for helping newly arrived refugees secure their footing in the United States.

Chelsea Sobolik, World Relief’s director of government relations, said her organization expected changes once Trump took office, but “this shocked us.” Sobolik is urging Congress to challenge the administration’s abrupt halt to the funding that she says ensures refugees have the support they need to become productive American citizens. Meanwhile, resettlement agencies are turning to private donors and local churches to help fill the gap.

Last fiscal year, the United States resettled more than 100,000 refugees. To qualify for the resettlement program, an individual must have fled his or her home country in fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, social status, or political opinion. To apply, the individual typically first registers with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Then, the U.S. Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security work together to vet the applicant—a rigorous process that can take 18 to 24 months, sometimes longer. Refugees are then eligible to work before they arrive in the country, unlike asylum seekers.

The federal Office of Refugee Resettlement provides some cash assistance to refugees during their first 90 days in the United States. After that, the government reimburses resettlement agencies that assist refugees with rent and food for several months. The agencies help the refugees enroll in healthcare plans and sign their children up for school. The memo from the State Department said that funding recipients “must cancel as many outstanding obligations as possible.”

In his executive order, Trump argued the United States “lacks the ability to absorb large numbers of migrants” without compromising the safety and security of Americans and straining local infrastructure. The State Department memo cited another executive order instituting a 90-day pause on all foreign aid until the administration reviews whether such programs are consistent with U.S. foreign policy. On Saturday, World Relief also received a memo directing the organization to stop some of the international programs the nonprofit operates in partnership with local churches through a grant agreement with the United States Agency for International Development.

“It is absolutely within the prerogative of any administration to review foreign assistance,” said Sobolik. “What confused us, and is frankly, concerning, is how immediate and sudden this was.”

Sobolik said people often conflate the refugee resettlement program with the asylum system or other temporary parole programs. Vice President J.D. Vance defended the administration’s decision to pause the program in an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation that aired Sunday, arguing the U.S. government didn’t properly vet the refugees who’ve arrived in the United States. To support his claim, he cited an Afghan national whom officials paroled into the country after he fled Afghanistan in 2021. In October, the FBI arrested him in Oklahoma for plotting a terrorist attack. But the man entered the country through a humanitarian parole program, not the refugee resettlement program, Sobolik pointed out.

The State Department canceled travel bookings for more than 10,000 people after Trump signed his order suspending the program, Timothy Young, a spokesman for Global Refuge, told WORLD. One of the nation’s largest resettlement organizations, Global Refuge is currently resettling about 6,000 refugees who have arrived in the country since the new fiscal year started on Oct. 1. Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the nonprofit’s CEO, said the funding freeze has “essentially stranded” many of their clients, she said, with no way to pay their rent in the next month.

“Thankfully, we do implement this program in partnership with congregations, community-based organizations. And so there is very much a private partnership component to this, but, really, it hinges on the federal funds that have always been supported in a bipartisan fashion,” O’Mara Vignarajah said.

President Jimmy Carter established the resettlement program when he signed the Refugee Act of 1980 into law, and both Republican and Democratic presidents traditionally have supported it.

Sobolik with World Relief spent much of last weekend emailing lawmakers on Capitol Hill about the funding suspension. “Congress authorized and appropriated that money, and so Congress does have a role to play in this,” she said. “We’re asking Congress to seek clarity, to ask for this to be reversed.”

In the meantime, World Relief is turning to private donors and churches to fill the gaps in funding. Not all of their resettlement work relied on government money to begin with, Sobolik noted. When a refugee family moves into a neighborhood, the organization rallies volunteers who fill the empty rooms of the apartment with furnishings.

“We’re hoping private donors will help fill that gap,” Sobolik said. “And that’s certainly something that we’re going to be working on. … We’ll seek to serve as best as we can. We’re going to be asking the local church to be the church.”