Arkansas & Funding Freezes: Resettlement At Risk
The GRACE Act can fight funding freezes. Here's what it would mean for Arkansas.
Predicted Funding Freeze
Two weeks ago, we published the following in our Alabama & Appropriations newsletter:
“The GRACE Act would also likely prohibit the President from placing a de-facto pause on refugee resettlement. Even if Congress appropriates sufficient funding for the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, without The GRACE Act, the executive branch can refuse to allocate those funds—or place extreme restrictions on those funds that would, effectively, pause resettlement. The GRACE Act would provide a legal basis to challenge those types of executive actions, ensuring that local resettlement agencies have the funds necessary to keep their doors open and their lights on.”
This prediction has become reality. Last week, the U.S. State Department issued a “stop work” order for refugee resettlement, impacting the Reception and Placement (R&P) Program that supports refugees during their first ninety days in the United States.
On top of that, The White House Office of Management and Budget issued an internal memo ordering agencies to “temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance, and other relevant agency activities”—halting other critical components of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.
Refugees Stranded Without Services
In addition to the 100% decline in future funding from the Reception & Placement “Per Capita” grant—experienced by every resettlement office across the Country as a result of the President’s arrivals suspension—resettlement agencies are now barred from spending down existing dollars.
Refugee resettlement agencies cannot spend federal funds on airport pick-ups, housing set-ups, school enrollments, English classes, or employment services for refugees who have just stepped foot onto American soil.
Partial Recision - Resettlement Remains At Risk
Following the National Council of Nonprofit’s successful Motion for a national Temporary Restraining Order on the funding freeze, the Trump Administration rescinded the blanket spending ban. As it was unclear whether or not the Trump Administration was complying with the courts, a separate judge issued a second Temporary Restraining Order, pausing the pause on disbursements to 22 states and the District of Columbia. We still do not know the extent to which the Administration is complying with these court orders.
We do know that funding for resettlement remains at risk. The Department of State’s “stop work” order is still in effect. Though a waiver has been issued excepting “life saving humanitarian assistance,” resettlement agencies lack clarity on what this means for the Reception and Placement Program.
And the outlook is bleak. The White House re-emphasized that President Trump’s executive orders “will be rigorously implemented by all agencies and departments,” including his Executive Order suspending the Refugee Program. The Administration intends to “focus on enforcing the President’s orders on controlling federal spending.” We know that the Trump Administration’s justification for pausing the Refugee Program was to “preserve taxpayer resources for its citizens.”
Resettlement offices now face a Herculean challenge: maintaining their programs despite an increasingly bleak financial future.
Resettlement agencies must now make impossible choices in the attempt to preserve some modicum of operational integrity, leading some to shut down entire local offices—while others drastically reduce staff, programs, and support services.
The Refugee Program needs additional protection that only a bipartisan statutory admissions floor can provide.
We Can’t Forget the Long Game
In response to the Trump Administration’s funding freeze, Democratic leadership of the Congressional Committees that govern the Refugee Program sent a letter calling on their former Republican colleague—now Secretary of State, Marco Rubio—to “revok[e] the stop work orders” and “swiftly resume refugee processing and admissions.”
Just as we showcased prior Republican support for the Refugee Program in our first newsletter, they highlight Secretary Rubio’s previous support of refugees:
“In August 2019, you joined a letter addressed to the Trump Administration in strong support of the refugee resettlement program. You also led the World Refugee Day Resolution in 2015. In support of the World Refugee Day Resolution, you stated: “Recent conflicts and persecution, especially religious persecution, have resulted in the largest number of displaced persons since World War II. The U.S. must continue to lead on this issue and work to ensure that refugees who flee war, torture and persecution are provided safe environments to live and thrive in.”
Outreach to Republican allies is critical in times of crisis—which means it is also critical all the time. Building a Refugee Program that can survive extreme executive volatility requires meaningful long-term bipartisan engagement, especially when it seems most impossible.
Additionally, we must focus our efforts on cultivating bipartisan legislative champions. Not only will these legislative champions become executive branch champions, Congressional advocates are singularly positioned to curtail executive overreach. Only Congress can create a truly durable Refugee Program.
Proactive advocacy centers Congressional relationship-building; reactive advocacy over-indexes on Executive Branch outreach.
While both are important, resettlement advocates must focus on building bipartisan Congressional support for a resettlement floor—a minimum number of refugees that must be admitted to the U.S. each year—if they want a Refugee Program that remains operational Administration to Administration.
We Decide Now
Executive volatility is our new norm. But reactive advocacy does not have to be.
We decide now if we will be repeating this cycle—of reaching out to unexpected allies at the last minute, of trying to stop executive action after executive action—the next time a Trump-like Administration comes into power.
Where we focus our actions and attention today will determine, if next time, the law dictates that refugee admissions must continue.
We decide—based on who we reach out to, what messages we use, and what advocacy objectives we prioritize—if the law dictates that funding for resettlement must make it to the refugees to which it was promised.
This is not something we decide when the storm clears. This is something we decide now, when the costs of resettlement’s collapse are the most clear.
The incentives for action must be greater than the incentives for inaction.
Every time the Trump Administration strands a refugee family member overseas, leaves a newly-arrived refugee unable to build a new, prosperous life in America, or causes a local resettlement office to close, the incentives for action—for a statutory floor—grow greater.
We cannot allow the urgency of now to overwhelm the necessities of tomorrow.
We need to focus our energies on showcasing the costs of resettlement’s collapse to both Republicans and Democrats at the constituent level. Remember, at home is where it hurts. Members of Congress need to know the costs of their inaction—and, conversely, the incentives for action—surrounding a statutory admissions floor.
Just take a look at Arkansas.
Arkansas: Effects of the Pause
The Arkansas Democratic Gazette reported that “Sixty-five people from among 25 families in Northwest Arkansas will not get assistance from the U.S. State Department previously allocated for them.” These include refugee families fleeing protracted conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghans escaping the tyranny of the Taliban, and Venezuelans fearing persecution from the Maduro regime.
These refugees, still within their first ninety-days in the U.S., cannot continue receiving federally-funded services: visits with case managers, assistance enrolling their children in school, or support navigating the U.S. medical system for the first time.
Arkansas’s resettlement agencies are scrambling to raise additional private funds to meet newly-arrived refugee’s basic needs, such as food and winter clothing.
The Director of Catholic Immigration Services in Little Rock described:
“We’ve been told by the government to abandon our clients that have just arrived.”
Fear and uncertainty govern resettlement in Arkansas. The trauma of the funding freeze only compounds the heartbreak of last week’s announcement that eight families in Arkansas will no longer be able to reunite with their loved ones after the Trump Administration banned new refugee arrivals.
Donate, Now.
The only way resettlement agencies—including those in Arkansas—can continue to support newly-arrived refugees is through private donations.
Americans must do what the federal government won’t: fund resettlement.
Today’s the day to donate to your local resettlement agency. They—quite literally— cannot do the work of resettlement with you.
In the coming weeks, we’ll be launching a website where you can click on your state, spot your local resettlement agency on a map, and know just where to donate. Until then, you can use the Refugee Processing Center’s Directory to find a resettlement agency at risk near you.
The GRACE Act
Refugees in Arkansas—or any state—would not have to face such turmoil if The GRACE Act were to become law.
Our prior newsletter noted that the GRACE Act would provide a legal basis to challenge these types of executive funding freezes by establishing a minimum number of refugees that must be admitted to the U.S. each year. Additionally, planned family reunifications would continue, even if anti-refugee Administrations were to come into Office.
It is time for us to decide where to put our political energy over the next four years—and what that will mean for the years and years and years to come.
It’s time to focus on laying the groundwork to pass a bipartisan statutory admissions floor.
Thanks for reading Save Resettlement.
Next week: California & Political Imagination.
Sending love.
