A young boy lines up with his family outside the refugee assistance office in Tapachula, Mexico, on March 9, 2022. Later in the day, a protest erupted outside the office, with dozens of migrants demanding their paperwork be expedited.
Nearly 400 refugees arrived in Arizona before President Donald Trump cut the funding meant to cover their rent and necessities for up to 90 days — assistance the U.S. guaranteed through a years-long vetting process.
Daisy Hernandez arrived in Tucson last November with her two sons, ages 22 and 17. She had begun her refugee case in 2019 after fleeing Colombia.
"I had to leave to protect my sons because I had already lost a brother—he was kidnapped by guerrilla fighters, and I wouldn’t want the same thing to happen to my sons,” she said in Spanish. “His loss is very painful. He was the one who supported me."
Parts of Colombia have a long history of forced disappearances, where victims, like Daisy Hernandez’ brother, are abducted and never seen again.
Refugees arriving in the U.S. typically receive 90 days of Congressionally-approved funding through resettlement agencies—covering rent, utilities, and initial costs. Hernandez says her guaranteed aid was cut short.
"And there wasn’t the help to pay the electricity bills that I had been promised, so I had to cover them myself,” she said. “Now it’s up to me. It was a hard blow because we’re still not settled. We’re not well organized to be without the assistance."
She says didn’t have the help paying her electricity bills that she was promised, which was a hard blow because she and her sons were still not settled or organized to get by without assistance.
She also had to cover her rent sooner than expected. She and her oldest son had just started dishwashing jobs a week before and keeping up with expenses was difficult.
Hours into his second term, Trump suspended the resettlement program, halting millions in reimbursements owed to resettlement agencies for services already provided. Besides covering necessities, the program helps people become self-sufficient very quickly, with help finding jobs, getting kids enrolled in school, finding medical providers and much more.
“We have certainly not been able to provide the level of case management support that we would have normally been able to do for the folks that have recently arrived,” says Connie Phillips, CEO of Lutheran Social Services of the Southwest.
Phillips says after the cuts, the agency laid off 46 staff. The remaining workers scrambled to find support for the newly-arrived refugees.
“They did not get the kind of attention that we would have been able to provide, the kind of time that a case manager who is just devoted to those first 90 days could give them because the folks that were helping them now, those staff also had other duties, and so their caseloads were much larger,” Phillips said.
One of those case managers is Benson Gasanga, who arrived in Tucson a year ago as a refugee himself. Born and raised in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, violence against people of Rwandan heritage forced him to flee to Ethiopia about 17 years ago, shortly after finishing high school.
In 2016, while living in a refugee camp, he learned he was accepted into the U.S. resettlement process. He was among the few in the overcrowded camp granted such an opportunity.
“I left my wife in Ethiopia and two kids. They are still there, but with the hope that they'll be joining me in the future — if God wishes,” Gasanga said.
Gasanga says since the funding cuts and layoffs, the remaining case managers struggled to keep up with all the cases reassigned to them.
“And we had employment specialists who were helping so fast to get clients employed soon, but now we don't have anyone who is supporting them,” he said.
He warns that without assistance, finding jobs will be harder, potentially leading to more long-term government dependence instead of quick self-sufficiency.
Kris Perry, a retired deacon and a parishioner of Resurrection Lutheran Church in Oro Valley, who volunteers with refugees, says families typically need 3 to 6 months of assistance to assimilate.
“And you have to remember that many of these refugee families have been in refugee camps for many, many years,” she said. “So coming to a place like Germany or America — they have no clue about our healthcare system, our bus transportation, how to maneuver grocery stores, all of that stuff. I mean, it is a culture shock.”
At the end of February, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to allow certain refugees with scheduled travel into the U.S. and to release frozen resettlement funds. Despite the ruling, Phillips, with Lutheran Social Services, says they don’t expect new arrivals anytime soon.
“There is no process to be able to bring those people into the country,” she said. “So, yes, the court has ordered that, but all of the processes that make that possible have been just dismantled.”
Preparing to come to the U.S. includes security screenings and health checks, which have now expired. The last time the system was dismantled, Phillips says, it took two nearly years to rebuild.
“It's not as easy as just — they don't even know where those people are, like they'd have to find them again,” she says. “You know, they may or may not still be in refugee camps. They may or may not be in contact with the entities. The entities may or may not still exist.
When Trump took office, Gasanga was expecting a new refugee client, who never arrived.
“I think what affected our clients, like me, who came in the United States separately from their families, who were behind coming, maybe following their families, they are really affected psychologically, financially, socially, because they don't have any hope when this is going to open for their families or relatives to join them in the United States,” he said. “And I would really encourage refugees or any other to be strong enough in such a kind of situation, though it's not easy, but there will be a time when things will be fine. That's what I hope for.”
Hernandez has started to feel more relaxed. She is no longer living in constant danger. But she wishes she could bring her mother from Colombia to the U.S. She says her family back home is still in danger.
"No one wants to leave because Colombia is beautiful, and you are with your family, so you don’t want to go,” she said. “But honestly, I wish that everyone in this situation could leave."
She says that no one wants to leave. Colombia is beautiful, and people are with their families. Nonetheless, she wishes everyone in her family’s situation could leave.
While the court ordered the government to resume processing and admissions for certain refugees, legal disputes over the case are ongoing.
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