America’s System for Resettling Refugees Is Collapsing

National resettlement agencies are closing offices and laying off staff in response to the decline in arrivals, leaving the future of the program in the balance.

Priscilla Alvarez

Sep 9, 2018

Huda Muhammed, a career-development program coordinator at the International Rescue Committee in Baltimore, Maryland. The IRC is one of nine organizations tasked with resettling refugees.Emily Jan / The Atlantic

BALTIMORE, Md.— A young girl hangs from a chair, swinging her legs and watching a fidget spinner spiral around her small finger. A couple huddles together, sifting through paperwork. A woman quietly speaks into her cellphone. A new life in America begins with quotidian routine here in this waiting room.

But the placid, ordinary moment at the International Rescue Committee’s office in Baltimore is vanishing in some areas of the country: Deep cuts by the Trump administration in the number of refugees admitted to the U.S. annually has forced the IRC and eight other nonprofits that help those fleeing war, famine, and persecution to cut staff and close offices.

“There has been, over the last two years, a systematic dismantling of the refugee-resettlement infrastructure by the administration, either directly or indirectly,” said Emily Gray, the senior vice president of U.S. ministries at World Relief, one of the nine agencies.

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