Catholic leadership in the United States is suing Donald Trump’s administration to reverse the president’s abrupt suspension of tens of millions of dollars in funding for refugee resettlement, which has stranded thousands of vulnerable people in war-torn countries despite their clearance for entry.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which has partnered with federal agencies for decades to help resettle refugees, received only a “cursory, two page” notice from the administration four days after Trump took office and froze foreign aid, along with “a vague suggestion that the awards may not be consistent with the State Department’s priorities.”
The effects within the weeks that followed have been “predictably devastating” for the group and the nearly 7,000 refugees it supports, according to a lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C. Tuesday.
When funding was suspended on January 24, USCCB was supporting more than 6,700 refugees who were still in a 90-day resettlement period. Millions of dollars in support has vanished, “with no indication that any future reimbursements will be paid or that the program will ever resume,” the lawsuit states.
USCCB was forced to lay off roughly 50 employees, and its inability to reimburse partner organizations has forced them to lay off staff and potentially stop providing housing, food shelter and other aid to refugees they support, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit notes that refugee resettlement isn’t even foreign aid — it’s a domestic program to support recently arrived refugees, after months or years of legal vetting, get on their feet with immediate needs like housing and employment.
“For decades, the U.S. government has chosen to admit refugees and outsourced its statutory responsibility to provide those refugees with resettlement assistance to non-profit organizations like USCCB,” the lawsuit states. “But now, after refugees have already arrived and been placed in USCCB’s care, the government is attempting to pull the rug out from under USCCB’s programs by halting funding.”
The lawsuit is at least the second from refugee-serving organizations taking aim at Trump’s evisceration of refugee aid since taking office, and among several lawsuits from faith organizations seeking to block the administration’s anti-immigration agenda.
Last week, the International Refugee Assistance Project sued the administration on behalf of Church World Service, HIAS, Lutheran Community Services Northwest and nine refugees directly impacted by Trump’s actions.
“Ahmed,” one of the plaintiffs in that case, was preparing for his resettlement to the United States before Trump’s executive order took effect
“When the Taliban took over Afghanistan I was a student at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul. I was a peace activist and advocated for human rights and was evacuated along with other students whose lives were at serious risk,” he said in a statement. “For the past three years, I’ve been waiting for the chance to go to the United States and reunite with my sister and her family. I have not seen her since 2021 and I have never met my youngest niece. I was so excited to join them.”
“Pacito,” the lead plaintiff in that lawsuit, is a Congolese refugee who fled war when he was 13 years old. He received a call that day before he was scheduled to be resettled in the United States that his flight was cancelled.
“I hoped there was a mistake,” he shared in a statement. “That night, my wife, my baby, and I slept outside the transit center in the parking lot, along with other refugee families waiting to travel to the United States. In the morning, they told us President Trump had cancelled all refugee travel. Now I don’t know what we’re going to do, we have nothing.”
Vice President JD Vance, who is a Catholic convert, recently accused Catholic bishops of resettling “illegal immigrants” in what he appeared to allege was a fraudulent scheme for millions of dollars in federal funding, echoing right-wing conspiracy theories fueled by Elon Musk that fraud and abuse is rampant in foreign aid.
Pope Francis had separately rebuked Vance for the administration’s mass deportation agenda and Vance’s apparent justification on theological grounds.
In a letter, the pope wrote that “the act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness.”
