Trump’s Anti-Refugee Campaign Just Hit a New Low

More than 20 local refugee resettlement offices are preparing to close as a result of lower refugee admissions, according to Reuters.

An intake counselor and a resettlement case manager help a refugee family with applications for subsidized childcare in Tampa, Florida. Loren Elliott/Tampa Bay Times via ZUMA Wire

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

More than 20 refugee resettlement offices are preparing to close across the United States, following a Trump administration order to downsize resettlement operations, Reuters reported Wednesday. More than 40 other offices will also cut back operations. The plans are currently being reviewed by the State Department for final approval, according to the report from Reuters, which saw a copy of the plans. 

Local resettlements offices, run by nine non-profits across the country in coordination with the federal government, provide crucial aid for refugees in their initial arrival in the US, with services such as finding housing and signing family members up for language classes, job training, and medical care. There are approximately 300 local resettlement offices across the US, and offices receive funding based on the number of refugees they resettle. The Trump administration reduced the annual refugee admissions cap to 45,000 last year, and in December, told refugee agencies that offices serving fewer than 100 refugees would no longer be authorized to resettle those coming to the country. 

“The changes will consolidate smaller affiliates, reduce costs and simplify management structures to help the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program run in a way that is fiscally responsible and sustainable in the long term,” Cheryl Harris, a State Department spokeswoman, told Reuters in an email.

These offices aren’t the first to close or limit their operations; many local resettlement offices have already shut down or reduced staff since the lower refugee ceiling was announced in September. 

The changes are alarming to proponents of the refugee resettlement program, who argue that closing the offices will cut off essential services to refugees, who can continue to access assistance from a resettlement center for up to five years.

“The population doesn’t go away when you turn off the spigot,” Robert Carey, former director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, told Reuters. “If the intent is really to have people integrate into society then doing this is counter to that intent.”

Melanie Nezer, senior vice president of public affairs at HIAS, one resettlement agency, said that the plummet in refugee admissions has meant fewer resources and funding for its offices, to the detriment of the refugees it is trying to serve. HIAS closed one office in Chicago last year, and is no longer taking new cases at its office in Los Angeles. “This is no way to run a refugee program,” Nezer tells Mother Jones. “We’ve made commitments to [refugees], and all of a sudden, they can’t come anymore. We’re really breaking promises to people who are very vulnerable and very desperate.” 

According to the latest plans seen by Reuters, California, Florida, Texas, and New York—states that typically resettle many refugees—would see the most office closures, while states such as Louisiana, Hawaii, and West Virginia would be left with no resettlement offices. World Relief, another organization that oversees local resettlement affiliates, announced Wednesday that it was forced to close five offices in Ohio, Florida, Maryland, and Tennessee, noting that the cuts to refugee admissions forced the agency to lay off more than 140 staff members last year. 

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate