Austin Refugee Organizations Panicking Amid Prolonged Halt in Federal Funding
Austin American-Statesman - Austin, TX
by Emiliano Tahui Gómez
February 27, 2025
“After three months of scraping by with the help of friends, Cuban immigrant Yusleydis Perez and her 15-year-old daughter started receiving financial assistance last month under a federal program that gives cash payments to eligible refugees and other authorized humanitarian immigrants while they are looking for work.
Perez, who settled in Austin after entering the U.S. legally in October, says she ‘doesn’t want public assistance.’ Still, the payments were a welcome relief as she has had trouble finding a full-time job.
But almost as soon as they started, the payments stopped.
A few weeks ago, Perez found out that the local nonprofit overseeing her case, Global Impact Initiative, was being forced to cease operations because it, too, had stopped receiving funding.
For the organization’s executive director, Anjum Malik, the reason was clear at first: The Trump administration had moved to freeze trillions of dollars in federal spending. Payments eventually resumed to refugee service organizations in states across the country.
But the money has not started flowing again in Texas, Malik said.
‘Our clients were left in a lurch,’ she said. ‘Nobody knew what was happening.’
As Malik and the leaders of other refugee programs try to figure out what’s going on, they’ve been all but forced to shut down.
Malik said her organization furloughed all 14 of its staff members Feb. 3 after going about two weeks without federal reimbursements. At the time of the furloughs, the organization was serving about 800 families, she said.
Those people are now at risk of losing housing and no longer have help navigating medical benefits enrollment or accessing job training.
‘How could a country that was based on the values of compassion and empathy get to be this way?’ Malik said.
Organizations like Malik’s, which offer support services to refugees and asylum-seekers, are funded through reimbursements from the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement.
In Texas, the money is funneled through two nonprofits, the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants and the Texas Office for Refugees.
Malik said the latter nonprofit, which fully funds her organization, has told her the holdup is occurring at the federal level.
The organization did not respond to requests for comment from the American-Statesman while the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants declined to comment.
The U.S. Administration of Children and Families, which oversees the federal Office for Refugee Resettlement, also did not respond to a request for comment.
It’s unclear exactly how many refugees and asylum-seekers in the Austin area are being affected by the prolonged funding stoppage, but Malik said it is in the thousands. Other local refugee service providers did not respond to requests for information.
For many of the newly arrived families, finding financial stability can be tricky in the first months, Malik said. During that time, cash assistance has helped many stay afloat, including with housing. The organization has heard from over two dozen families who have received eviction notices since payments stopped, she said.
One, who had recently arrived from Syria, ‘packed up their bags and left for L.A.’ out of fright, Malik said.
On Wednesday morning, volunteers and at least six furloughed Global Impact Initiative staff members gathered at the organization’s North Austin headquarters to complete new intake forms for the most at-risk families.
Perez was one of them.
In a tiny, undecorated office, furloughed caseworker Alexa Hernandez helped Pérez and another recent Cuban arrival fill out an intake form that was written in English. She translated the form for the women, asking them whether they had extended family, friends or a church they could rely on.
Perez said she had friends who had helped her scrape by while she looked for a job. She finally found a job last week as a cleaner at a local hotel after three months of searching, but she is still worried about making ends meet.
Hernandez offered Perez and the other woman a $50 H-E-B gift card, the result of recent fundraising efforts by local advocacy organization Austin Jews and Partners for Refugees.
‘I don’t know when we’ll be back to work,’ Hernandez said in Spanish. ‘Hopefully, we’ll be able to call you very soon.’”
https://www.statesman.com/story/news/local/2025/02/27/austin-tx-refugee-organizations-panic-federal-funding-freeze/80677323007/
