Refugees in Chicago face family separation after Trump halts resettlement program

When David was approved for refugee resettlement in the United States, he felt like it was a place of opportunities and freedom.

But two years later after resettling from Zimbabwe in Chicago, he’s now feeling a sense of regret. President Donald Trump’s halt to refugee resettlement means David is unsure if he will get to see his wife in the next four years. He agreed to be interviewed on the condition he be identified only by his first name.

“Why did I come here?” David says he asks himself. “Because what is happening here is like the things that we run away from. Even if you have forgotten what happened, things that you see on TV — how people are being arrested — they bring back all of those memories that we tried to bury.”

The refugee resettlement program is a legal form of migration to the United States. It’s for people who are from a place of humanitarian concern to the U.S. or were persecuted due to race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a social group, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

On the day Trump was sworn into office, he issued an executive order suspending refugee resettlement for at least 90 days. Government agencies are supposed to submit a report to the president about whether the program is in the “interests of the United States,” the order states.

The order mentioned the number of immigrants arriving in cities like Chicago in recent years, though many are seeking asylum or temporary protected status and do not have refugee status.

For refugees like David, who were in the process of bringing close relatives to the United States, the order will lead to family separations, advocates say.

“Much of what the executive order talked about for justification seemed to have more in common with people arriving through the southern border than it did for those coming through the refugee program,” says Peter Zigterman, immigrant family services director at World Relief Chicagoland. It didn’t account for the different legal statuses for the two populations, he said.

The president sets the number of refugees allowed into the country for each fiscal year. A person has to be referred for resettlement through the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, the U.S. embassy or a non-government organization, according to USCIS. Advocates say refugees wait years before being approved for the program and undergo extensive background checks.

For fiscal year 2025, former President Joe Biden had set the refugee cap at 125,000 people.

After someone is allowed into the country with refugee status, the person is eligible for U.S. permanent residence, or a green card, after one year, according to USCIS.

World Relief Chicagoland was preparing to resettle more than 100 refugees in February and March in the Chicago area, but after Trump’s order, their flights were canceled. About 24% were Venezuelan while 24% were Burmese, including Rohingya refugees. Other cases involved refugees from Syria, Sudan and Afghanistan.

Many advocates say it remains unclear what options are left for those who weren’t able to enter the country before the order was issued.

Families aren’t often resettled at the same time, Zigterman says. He recalled how one man went into their office after Inauguration Day to figure out why his relatives’ flights were canceled.

“Those are gut-wrenching conversations for the caseworker,” he said.

Services for refugees in limbo

Resettlement agencies also were given a “stop all work” order if they received funding from a federal grant that provides support services for refugees during their first 90 days in the country, said Stacey Shor, president and CEO of JCFS Chicago. Shor said they were expecting refugee resettlement to decrease significantly under Trump, but they did not anticipate they would be told to stop services for those already in the country.

The order called for a halt to federally funded services including job placement and housing. This money is separate from the general federal funding that Trump initially halted and then quickly reinstated.

“That would go away immediately, so we’ve had to turn to other kinds of supports to make up for that short term need,” Shor says, adding that the organization is paying for those services through state, private and foundation funds.

The organization had resettled 67 people from Election Day through Inauguration Day.

State Rep. Hoan Huynh, D- Chicago, is the first refugee to serve in the Illinois General Assembly, and he described the changes to refugee resettlement as inhumane. Huynh, as a child, fled Vietnam and eventually resettled in the U.S.

“If we had not been approved by the United States and the United Nations humanitarian efforts, we would have been killed,” Huynh says.

He says lawmakers are looking into ways to support organizations that work with refugees who will be losing federal funding. This week, he was among the lawmakers in Springfield who signed onto a resolution condemning Trump’s immigration policies.

“It’s going to throw these refugee families into a period of limbo, and I think it’s going to take years and years for us to really resolve a lot of the chaos that the current president has inflicted on the our refugee communities,” Huynh says.

Fear of deportations spreads to refugees

While refugees like David are not facing threats of deportations, the fear has spread into the community. He and his brother now drive their parents — who also have refugee status — to and from work because news of immigrants being arrested have made them fearful of public transportation.

“They are very afraid, especially because my parents grew up in Rwanda, they know how those things look like, they’re afraid to see even a person with handcuffs,” he says.

David, 30, was born in Rwanda, but his memories of the country mostly come from magazines and TV. Since he was 7 years old, the closest place to home was the refugee camp in Zimbabwe where his family lived until they were approved for refugee resettlement in the U.S.

They could not leave the camp without a visa, he says. And even after he managed to obtain higher education and did community work at the camp, his lack of citizenship in Zimbabwe limited the types of jobs he could obtain.

“What I liked the most when I came here was I was living freely without restrictions,” says David, who resettled to Chicago in 2023.

David has started working at RefugeeOne, the resettlement agency that helped him when he first arrived, and he’s retaking college courses because his degree wasn’t recognized by the U.S.

“I always have to help refugees, and I think I felt in good hands, whereby I’m directly involved in helping refugees especially those that I speak the same language with,” says David, who speaks five languages.

He was not legally married to his wife, Celine, when he started his resettlement process, which is why they couldn’t come together to Chicago. He was hopeful that she would be able to join him through family reunification — something that seems impossible after Trump’s executive order.

“You don’t know for how long you’re going to keep waiting to meet your partner,” he says. He and his wife would like to start a family of their own soon. “Hopefully something will happen that will make us meet again.”

Though he’s been in the country for more than a year, David says his application for a green card remains pending.

Stephanie Japczyk, the clinical manager of wellness at RefugeeOne who works with David, says family reunification, for now, is the only legal method refugees like David have to try to reunite with relatives. Other refugees the agency works with are also struggling to figure out how they will be reunited with children and parents now that refugee resettlement has stopped.

“Chicago and the United States are made better by David being here,” Japczyk says as she pauses and holds back tears. “And it’s painful to see that that opportunity won’t be afforded to folks who are in very real danger and who do so much to enrich our communities.”