Trump’s halt on refugees leaves Pa. families fearful for loved ones overseas: ‘There is no hope’

American embassy specialist Mohibullah Hasrat was evacuated from Afghanistan as the nation fell to the Taliban, departing Kabul with the promise that his parents and sisters would join him in the United States.

Finally, three years after they took refuge in Pakistan, his family was set to arrive in Philadelphia on Feb. 9 — when their flight was suddenly canceled after President Donald Trump ordered a halt to the nation’s refugee-admissions program. Now Hasrat’s father, mother, and three siblings face imminent deportation to Afghanistan, into the hands of a vengeful Taliban.

As the ban roils government offices and resettlement agencies, Hasrat, 32, knows only this: If the Taliban takes his parents and sisters, he will return to Afghanistan and surrender. That way, at least, they will all die together.

“They’ll be immediately executed,” said Hasrat, who now lives in West Philadelphia after he, his wife, and their children were evacuated among the U.S. war allies in 2021. “I’m personally very proud of what I did for the U.S. in Afghanistan, but my family doesn’t deserve to get punished for what I did.”

Trump’s late January order to stop new admissions — and a second directive that cut off funding to agencies that support those already here — has put people in life-threatening situations.

Some of the world’s most vulnerable people have been stranded in volatile countries amid thousands of canceled flights, and others left homeless and destitute as they readied for departures that never came. Family members in this country say they are shattered for parents and siblings who counted on the now-broken promise that they would be brought to new lives in the United States.

“I didn’t know what to say,” said Sahar Mehryar, 25, originally from Afghanistan, who had to tell her parents, two brothers, and two sisters in Pakistan that they would not be coming to her in Lancaster. “Like, ‘OK, sorry. Actually, there is no hope.’”

The hold on admissions has forced hundreds of layoffs at resettlement agencies around the country and triggered a federal lawsuit, filed earlier this month in Seattle, that seeks to block Trump’s order and restore funding and arrivals.

“This is a program that was created by Congress, and a president cannot override it with just the stroke of a pen,” Linda Evarts, senior supervising attorney for U.S. litigation with the International Refugee Assistance Project, said in a phone call with reporters. “The longer his suspension lasts, the longer the harm will take to repair, if it can ever be repaired.”

At the heart of Trump’s order stand dueling visions of the U.S. role in the world. In one, the nation holds out Lady Liberty’s promise to newcomers who it believes will grow, thrive, and contribute. In the other, America aims to protect itself from refugees it sees as takers, as costly expenses whose very loyalties could be suspect.

Trump has cited security and terrorism concerns around refugees, and his Jan. 27 order that stopped admissions said the United States lacks the ability to absorb them in a way “that does not compromise the availability of resources for Americans, that protects their safety and security, and that ensures the appropriate assimilation.”

All arrivals are barred until their entry “aligns with the interests of the United States,” Trump wrote.

The admissions system is a form of legal immigration, and refugees carry a specific status. All are people who have been forced to flee their homelands and seek safety in another country due to war, violence, or persecution. Some spend decades in refugee camps, and others do not even get that accommodation, living in crowded, makeshift shelters or tents.

If approved for resettlement in the United States, refugees undergo intense vetting and security checks that can take several years. Once in this country, they have a clear path to citizenship.

Worldwide need has rarely been greater, with more than 120 million people — roughly the population of Japan — having been forcibly displaced, according to the United Nations. That includes 43 million refugees, more than double the figure from 30 years earlier.

The ramifications of Trump’s orders are being felt across Pennsylvania, a state that resettles several thousand refugees annually.

HIAS Pennsylvania, which expected to resettle 100 refugees this year, no longer has federal funding to help four families already here, who were supposed to receive services until April 13. The federal government typically enables agencies to provide 90 days of services, a critical lifeline that has long been funded with bipartisan political support.

HIAS Pennsylvania has decided to pay for those families’ needs from its own budget until that date, according to Cathryn Miller-Wilson, the agency’s executive director.

“These are people that just arrived — they need help,” Miller-Wilson said. “That’s the point of the resettlement program.”

Eleven refugees from Honduras, Afghanistan, Belarus, and Myanmar, who had family waiting to receive them here, saw their cases canceled, she said.

Arrivals have stopped at Nationalities Service Center, the large Philadelphia agency that welcomed 723 refugees from countries including Afghanistan, Syria, Myanmar, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo during the last 16 months.

It hopes for swift restoration of a U.S. program that demonstrates “core American values — work hard, care for your family, participate in your community, and give back,” said executive director Margaret O’Sullivan.

In the meantime, prospects have turned dire.

NSC had 23 people in 12 families scheduled to arrive this month — their cases canceled after the executive order.

That included a Syrian family of seven traveling here from Egypt to reunite with family members who had been resettled by NSC in September. The seven include an elderly couple who need medical care, according to NSC.

Also canceled was the travel of a 25-year-old Afghan man who was coming from Qatar to reunite with his father, mother, and younger brother, who arrived here in July through NSC.

The financial strain is real and urgent.

NSC’s $13.4 million budget is 80% federally funded, through performance-based contracts and grants. Since late January, 20% of the agency’s funding has either been halted, not renewed, or deemed at risk. NSC also awaits reimbursement of nearly $300,000 for services it provided to refugees who arrived in December and January.

Rick Santos, president and CEO of Church World Service, the global advocate that is a plaintiff in the Seattle lawsuit, said the organization has furloughed more than half its U.S. staff, including about 150 people working in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

In the CWS office on King Street in Lancaster, client files are stacked on empty desks.

Rwamucyo Karekezi, the lone remaining employee among about a dozen, recently walked through the darkened work area, carrying two cell phones and a laptop computer as he tried to keep up with calls for help — even though there is no money to pay.

The agency works with about 500 people in the Lancaster and Harrisburg areas, he said, providing services that range from securing housing to English classes to career help.

“When the administration said they don’t want illegal immigrants, undocumented people, most refugees felt safe because they were brought here,” said Karekezi, who was resettled in Lancaster in 2017 after more than 20 years in a refugee camp in Rwanda. “Now they’re being impacted so badly.”

Nationwide, thousands of refugees who were on track for arrival have been put on hold, including one who is personal to Karekezi — his sister, who has spent 30 years in a Rwandan refugee camp. Last year, four of her children were resettled in Lancaster, and she had hoped to join them soon.

She had completed all required interviews and medical exams when Trump halted admissions, taking her “from having hope now to no hope,” Karekezi said.

The United States has traditionally led the world in resettlement, welcoming, for instance, 50,000 to 100,000 people a year between 2011 and 2016. That changed during the first Trump presidency, when an administration crackdown on immigration drove admissions to a record yearly low of 11,400.

President Joe Biden revived a shrunken system, resettling 100,034 refugees in fiscal 2024, the largest number in 30 years, according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute in Washington.

Biden’s turnaround pushed admissions to the highest level since 1994, when nearly 113,000 refugees were resettled, and restored the United States’ role as the top global destination.

Agencies that work with refugees knew a second Trump term would bring new restrictions on immigration, potentially including a bar on resettlements. Less expected was a freeze on the money to help those already here.

“It is a turning point,” said Carl Bon Tempo, an associate professor of history at the University at Albany, State University of New York, and the author of Americans at the Gate: The United States and Refugees during the Cold War. “The effort to starve this whole project of refugee admissions seems much more advanced this time around.”

The law that created the modern admissions system, the Refugee Act of 1980, gives presidents tremendous discretion over how many people the nation will accept. The Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks brought a retreat, though numbers grew later in the George W. Bush administration and then under Barack Obama.

Now?

“Historically, this is very different,” Bon Tempo said. “For decades Republican and Democratic presidents agreed that the United States should have either decently robust or very robust refugee admissions — significant refugee admissions. Trump and his advisers clearly dissent from that idea.”

Opponents of resettlement cite the cost of supporting refugees as a detriment, a reason to cut off the flow of people who often arrive with nothing but a suitcase. The program’s supporters say that resettlement is a moral imperative, not a financial calculation, and that the gains outweigh the losses.

Refugees often rely on government programs such as Medicaid and SNAP early in their arrivals. But studies show those costs are meager compared to the benefits that follow.

Between 2005 and 2019, a major Department of Health and Human Services study found, refugees and asylees contributed nearly $124 billion more in tax receipts than they withdrew in government services.

In fiscal 2024, the top sending nations to the United States were the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, and Venezuela. Pennsylvania ranked fifth among states accepting the most refugees, at 4,445, behind Texas, California, New York, and Washington.

The end of the war in Afghanistan continues to generate admissions — or did, until Trump’s orders.

The chaotic evacuation of Kabul commenced what became the largest U.S. resettlement since the Vietnam War, as the U.S. brought 76,000 Afghan nationals to this country.

“The question was: What will happen to our families?” said Hasrat, who has a master’s degree in business administration from Kardan University in Kabul. “The ambassador promised that our families would come later on, everyone through the refugee program.”

Hasrat assisted the American effort in Afghanistan as an embassy grants-management specialist, helping coordinate agreements with organizations that served women, youth, and peace-building goals.

His parents and sisters made it into Pakistan in December 2021, four months after the fall. There they underwent rigorous screening and biometrics checks by U.S. agencies.

The family phoned in mid-January saying they had been cleared for cultural orientation, a final step in the process, and would be arriving on Feb. 9.

Instead their flight was canceled. And the visas that allow them to live in Pakistan will soon no longer be valid, at a time when the government in Islamabad has been forcibly repatriating hundreds of thousands of Afghans, blaming them for a rise in crime.

His father’s visa has already expired, Hasrat said, and his mother’s and sisters’ permissions run out on Sunday. The United Nations has warned the Pakistani government that Afghans could face harm if sent back.

Hasrat says there is little doubt what will befall his family, because of his work assisting the U.S. military effort. He is doing everything he can, contacting every government office and potential ally, trying to save his parents and sisters.

But if he fails, he said, he is ready to return to his homeland, and they will leave this world together.

“I have put them in this situation,” Hasrat said. “I cannot see them being punished for what I did.”