Despite victories in court, faith groups struggle to help refugees
| Washington
Welcoming and sheltering people fleeing violence and persecution is a moral and spiritual imperative across faiths. The commandment to welcome the stranger – reminding Jews of their own experience as strangers – is repeated more than any other commandment in the Torah.
“The mandate is really clear, and it comes from a position of empathy,” says Mark Hetfield, president of HIAS, the oldest Jewish refugee agency in the United States.
But after decades of working with the government to resettle refugees, organizations in the U.S. find themselves suddenly without a partner. The change began on President Donald Trump’s first day in office, when he signed an executive order suspending refugee admissions and freezing funding for support systems. A series of lawsuits by faith-based groups followed, saying that the cessation infringed on the practice of their faith.
Why We Wrote This
Many religions center “welcoming the stranger” as a mandate. What will come next for faith-based refugee groups as their ability to practice a good Samaritan approach is tested by Trump administration orders halting refugees?
On April 9, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops – which operates some of the largest refugee resettlement programs – announced in a Washington Post op-ed the “gut-wrenching decision” to shut down those programs by the end of the year. The USCCB’s programs are some of the largest, operating alongside groups like Church World Service, HIAS, World Relief, and Global Refuge (formerly Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service). Of the 10 large nonprofits that work to resettle refugees, seven are faith-based.
That same day, a federal judge denied the Trump administration’s request to reconsider his ruling that the government must comply with the law to continue admitting and providing resettlement support to refugees conditionally approved as of Jan. 20. Judge Jamal Whitehead also said the government must continue to fund its partners.
His ruling comes after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in late March that, while the Trump administration can stop processing new refugee applications, it can’t block the arrival of refugees whose status was approved before Jan. 20. Although the court ruled that the administration has to deliver outstanding funding for past and existing contracts, reimbursements to the agencies have yet to come through.
One of the lawsuits – challenging the administration’s suspension of funding – was brought by the Catholic bishops, who rarely engage in legal challenges.
Lawyers for the faith groups argue that the government is refusing to comply with the courts.
“Defendants now admit that they are not complying and do not intend to comply with either of this Court’s preliminary injunctions,” their brief reads.
How the refugee system works
More than 100,000 refugees were resettled in fiscal year 2024 under the Refugee Admissions Program. The current legal framework extends back to the 1980s, but the precedent for admitting refugees to the U.S. predates that. Recent refugees include Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion, Afghans who served the U.S. military and now face threats under the Taliban, and persecuted religious and ethnic minorities like Uyghurs, Bahá’ís, and Iranian Christians.
A recent survey sponsored by the Evangelical Immigration Table found that about 70% of evangelical Americans agree the U.S. has a moral responsibility to accept refugees. According to the Public Religion Research Institute, 85% of white evangelicals voted for Mr. Trump in 2024.
“The Refugee Admissions Program is unique, because we rely on the U.S. government for two things: They give us refugees, and they give us funding,” says Mr. Hetfield, of HIAS.
Since January, the government has delivered neither.
“Over the last 4 years, the United States has been inundated with record levels of migration, including through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP). Cities and small towns alike, from Charleroi, Pennsylvania, and Springfield, Ohio, to Whitewater, Wisconsin, have seen significant influxes of migrants,” reads the president’s executive order from Jan. 20.
Several resettlement agency directors noted in interviews that many of the examples in the executive order have to do with people entering the country under immigration programs separate from refugee admissions.
In response to questions about whether the State Department plans to admit refugees facing religious persecution or renew partnerships with faith-based organizations, a spokespersons said, “The State Department is continually evaluating all of our programs to ensure strategic alignment with the Administration’s America First policy priorities.”
“It is the policy of the United States to ensure that public safety and national security are paramount considerations in the administration of the [U.S. Refugee Admissions Program], and to admit only those refugees who can fully and appropriately assimilate into the United States and to ensure that the United States preserves taxpayer resources for its citizens,” reads the order, which effectively halted refugee admissions and funding.
“We call each other brother and sister”
That leaves groups resettlement organizations in limbo. They are reexamining the services they can and do provide – now, on their own. Going forward, the USCCB plans to focus strongly on advocacy and programs that help immigrants adjust to new lives in the U.S., says Bill Canny, executive director of Migration and Refugee Services of the USCCB.
All of the largest resettlement agencies have laid off large portions of their staff, both in the U.S. and overseas. At HIAS, layoffs amounted to over a third of the organization’s worldwide staff.
Employees, many of whom joined in part because of their personal faith, say they feel betrayed.
“If you’re in the international religious freedom community, you want the U.S. to have a functioning process to provide shelter to religious people who are persecuted in their home countries,” says Matthew Soerens, vice president of advocacy and policy at World Relief.
Marjila Badakhsh, a former case manager for Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital Area (LSSNCA), was laid off the week of the Jan. 20 executive order.
She came to the U.S. in 2021, after Kabul fell to Taliban forces. She worked as a freelance journalist in Afghanistan and was resettled in the U.S. through LSSNCA and soon started working for the organization. Her family is still in Afghanistan.
“In Islam, we call each other brother and sister,” she says. That carries deep meaning in her work resettling families and individuals.
In February, HIAS had more than 600 refugees approved, ticketed, and ready for travel. They are still awaiting entry to the U.S. Last year, HIAS settled about 8,200 refugees, the largest number the group received in 25 years.
Within the U.S., HIAS is pivoting to focus on aiding people seeking asylum and other protected statuses, and has raised enough private funds to run programs without relying on government funding, which was 60%.
“We’re not aspiring to be as large as we were,” says Mr. Hetfield. Instead, “We will be leaner and more impactful with what we have.”
Why faiths are taking the lead in court
When it comes to litigation, it is faith-based organizations taking the lead, says Mr. Hetfield.
“We have an advantage over secular organizations, because we have a constituency, we have a community, and we are deeply seated in the values of that community,” he says. “It gives us an ability to continue with our mission, even after losing a majority of our funding, because we still have what matters most, which is an entire faith community behind us.”
In stark contrast to January, when law firms were practically “lining up” to take on cases challenging the Trump administration’s policy changes and funding suspensions, Mr. Hetfield says HIAS now has a hard time finding firms willing to take cases.
Many faith leaders have spoken out in opposition to freezing refugee resettlement. Few have publicly expressed support. Some have remained silent. Several evangelical organizations declined to comment or did not respond to questions from the Monitor.
“I want the government to understand refugees as individuals, as families,” says Ms. Badakhsh. “They have dreams. They have hopes. They left everything behind to come for a better life.”
The USCCB will continue to inculcate conversations at the parish level to “open up minds and hearts,” says Mr. Canny. “There’s an understanding of such things as the parable of the good Samaritan and understanding of the imperative to welcome the stranger intellectually.”
But when Catholics and others see their concerns about government spending for health care or retirement “juxtaposed against the needs of newcomers and immigrants, it poses a bit of an intellectual and moral dilemma for people,” he says. “Our job is to help them work through that and approach the plight of the newcomer from their heart and to act in such a manner as the good Samaritan did.”
At World Relief, employees affirm a statement of faith when they join. “This is a very personal issue for a lot of our staff,” says Mr. Soerens. “We have a lot of former refugees themselves who are on our staff, and we have a staff that is motivated by the Christian faith.”
Other organizations, like Lutheran Social Services, grew out of specific faith roots and now are interfaith.
But a certain ethic still undergirds their work, says the Rev. Christine Dunn, director of development at LSSNCA. “The thing that we all share is that belief in the inherent dignity of each person.”
Editor’s note: This article was updated to include a response from the State Department.
