The names have been changed in this story to respect the privacy of the sources.

Rwandan refugee and Durham resident Emmanuel Mugisha was expecting to reunite with friends he hadn’t seen in years. Several families from Mugisha’s refugee camp back in Rwanda were scheduled to move to Durham at the end of January, following a years-long resettlement process through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Mugisha said these soon-to-be migrants sold their property and belongings, preparing for a long-awaited move halfway across the world. However, within President Donald Trump’s first week in office, he signed an executive order to indefinitely pause the refugee resettlement program. Mugisha’s friends’ and neighbors’ flights were canceled – and their plans to move were put on pause.  

“It’s a heartbreaking story,” Mugisha said.

The executive order, called Realigning the Refugee Admissions Program, has both prohibited the entry of new refugees for 90 days and paused funding for existing services for refugees who have recently arrived in the country.  

Several refugee resettlement agencies challenged the executive order in a Seattle court in February. A federal judge then ordered the Trump administration to resume the Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), but they did not cooperate. Instead, the White House terminated federal contracts of several resettlement agencies.

One of the plaintiffs in the case – whose contract has now been terminated – is Church World Service (CWS), whose branch agency in Durham facilitated Mugisha’s arrival.

CWS’s Mid Atlantic Regional Director Beth Caldwell said there is a lot of fear and insecurity surrounding these changes.

“It’s a really difficult time for individuals who are separated from family members who would be reunited through the process of resettlement,” Caldwell said. “So there were very high hopes, as there are around every arrival for families that were coming even that week, and the cancellations were devastating.”

In 2021, Mugisha left Rwanda and immigrated to the United States at the age of 19, knowing no one except his mother and brother. Since then, he has worked hard to form a community for himself, having made friends with other African immigrants. But, he misses his friends and neighbors from back home and was excited for their arrival.

“If I got those friends coming in, then I got my people back,” Mugisha said.

 

Newly-arrived refugees also facing problems

Durham’s Church World Service (CWS), a refugee resettlement agency and assistance program, facilitated the arrival of over 200 refugees between October and January of this past year. CWS provides refugees within their first 90 days of arrival with basic supports, including help securing housing, finding jobs, and enrolling in school. 

However, since the executive order paused funding for these services, CWS has had to furlough two-thirds of their staff – therefore limiting their operations and capacity to help Durham’s refugees.

“Our system is really inherently built on achieving self-sufficiency very quickly in the US, and this just really removes those building blocks that help us support families in any self-sufficiency,” said Caldwell.

World Relief Durham, another local resettlement agency, has facilitated the arrival of 129 people in Durham in the last 90 days. These people suddenly became at risk of homelessness due to the withholding of federal funds, said the organization’s executive director Adam Clark.

To combat the lack of funds, World Relief Durham is raising emergency funding from the community to help newly-arrived refugees pay for rent, food, and other basic needs. CWS is also raising emergency response funding.

During a similar ban in 2017, the existing funding that had been allocated for newly-arrived refugees was still valid even though incoming refugees were no longer being admitted. Trump’s current administration has frozen the funding to serve the people already in the U.S., Clark said.

Kokou Nayo, the Immigrant and Refugee Affairs Coordinator for Durham, said the local government is unable to subsidize these refugee assistance programs amidst the funding freeze because the programs have contracts with the federal government. 

“Resettlement agencies have done huge work throughout the past to really support the integration of the new arrivals,” Nayo said. “That support in finding a new job, and learning the new language, and being there to really help them navigate the system – that support has been shrunk to the bare minimum, and having that will have a long effect on their integration.” 

 

“We still have hope”

Mugisha faced a similar challenge in 2017 at the beginning of the first Trump administration. Mugisha and his family were preparing to move to the U.S. in February 2017 when Trump passed an executive order to halt entry for refugees for 120 days, just four weeks before his flight. He didn’t arrive in the U.S. for another four years.  

“Imagine setting up in your mind that you’re gonna change your life, you’re gonna change location, you’re moving to somewhere else, you’re getting your payout, you’re signing a lot of stuff, and at the end of the day – you end up coming back home,” Mugisha said.

Mugisha is part of the Tutsi ethnic group, which endured mass persecution during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

In order to keep their family safe, Mugisha’s parents fled the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Rwanda, where Mugisha was raised in a refugee camp. 

Since 1994, the global refugee population has more than doubled, with over 43 million refugees reported worldwide as of last year. 

One of Mugisha’s friends from the refugee camp where he lived in Rwanda, Patrick, was contacted by UNHCR in 2022 that he was eligible to resettle in the U.S. However, after passing the interview stages in 2023, Patrick has not heard back regarding his next steps towards immigration.

Patrick estimated that about five families in his refugee camp had their flights to the U.S. cancelled when Trump passed the executive order. Patrick said these families have been under distress and are “struggling from scratch,” as they need even the most basic household items after selling or donating their belongings. 

But, Patrick acknowledged that this has happened before, and he is optimistic that these families and his own will still get to come to the U.S. in the future.

“We still have hope,” he said.

 

Refugee politics

Trump claims the U.S. “lacks the ability to absorb large numbers of migrants” and that the refugee resettlement program is “detrimental” to the country’s interests, according to January’s executive order. The Trump administration has proposed the creation of a new refugee admissions program that is ​​“aligned with administration policies,” but they have not released further details.

Nayo, Durham’s immigration coordinator, said it is unclear what will happen next. Following Trump’s first USRAP suspension in January 2017, refugee admissions resumed in October 2017 at much lower levels, several months after the 120-day period expired. 

Clark noted that refugee admissions have a history of bipartisan support since the inception of USRAP in 1980.

“It did not used to be controversial to help victims or survivors of genocide and ethnic cleansing and war,” Clark said. “This should be a moral no-brainer.” 

Since arriving in Durham, Mugisha has been working toward a university degree and pursuing a career in supply chain management. He said his friends from back home who are no longer able to come are missing out on opportunities here. 

He has been sending money back home to his friends, who now have to buy back their belongings. 

“They do have a dream, but because of those limited opportunities, limited resources, there is no way to get to their dreams,” Mugisha said. 

 

Edited by Courtney Fisher

Edited by Madeleine Denechaud

Edited by Ginny Dempster