As a pause of federal refugee relocation programs is in effect, local groups like Kentucky Refugee Ministries (KRM) say they’ve been affected.
President Trump signed an executive order temporarily freezing the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program late last month. The U.S. State Department also froze funding to groups that help refugees with housing and job placement.
Mary Cobb is the director of KRM’s Lexington office. She says the freeze has kept some refugees’ status uncertain.
“People who had, in some cases, a ticket booked by the U.S. government and that ticket was canceled, who had been pulled from a refugee camp, sold all their stuff, maybe left employment, if they had it, are just in limbo and stuck,” Cobb said.
KRM organized an event at West Sixth Brewery in Lexington Thursday evening. Impacted refugees spoke about how that freeze impacted them and their families.
One refugee who goes by Hamid was evacuated from Afghanistan and separated from his family in 2021. He says efforts to get his family visas were stopped because of the freeze.
“We want to start again, the case processing. My wife’s still in Pakistan, she’s not allowed to go outside the hotel,” Hamid said.
Advocacy group AfghanEvac says more than 10,000 Afghan refugees are in Pakistan waiting for visas or resettlement. Many of them worked for the U.S. government or military before Afghanistan’s fall to the Taliban in 2021.
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