Saturday February 1, 2025
by Katelyn Vue
Local resettlement agencies say refugees from Myanmar, Somalia, Honduras, Venezuela and other countries were stopped from immigrating to Minnesota.
Fardowsa Abdi Aden (center), 35, embraces her aunt, Shun Adan, as they reunite at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on January 17, 2025. Fardowsa immigrated to Minnesota from an Ethiopian refugee camp. Credit: Aaron Nesheim | Sahan Journal
About 6,500 refugees were expected to resettle in Minnesota this fiscal year, but the future for several thousand of those refugees is in limbo because of several presidential executive orders.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in the last several days canceling the arrival of thousands of refugees who were approved to immigrate to the United States, and another order that halts federal funding for agencies that help refugees.
Refugee resettlement agencies and foreign-aid programs in Minnesota are scrambling to maintain their services, with one St. Paul-based organization laying off most of its employees across the globe.
“We don’t know what our fate is in the next two years or three, so we are definitely worried about that,” said Kilo Kisongo, who co-founded Voices in the Wilderness, which helps resettle Congolese refugees in Minnesota. “But at this moment, we don’t have any power. It’s just we’re staying or remaining hopeful some people will be able to intervene and not let those orders pass or go through as he [Trump] intends them to.”
Minnesota was slated to receive about 6,500 refugees between October 1, 2024 and September 30, 2025, according to the Minnesota Department of Human Services. Of those, 1,018 made it to Minnesota by the end of December 2024. The Department of Human Services doesn’t have information about the country of origin for refugees who are awaiting resettlement in Minnesota.
The International Institute of Minnesota and the Minnesota Council of Churches are some of the local resettlement agencies that were required to halt operations when Trump signed an executive order on January 24, bringing U.S.-funded humanitarian aid to a sudden stop across the globe. That funding typically covers the costs of resettling refugees during their first weeks of arrival, including their first month’s rent and bus passes.
Agencies are now relying more on funds from local donors to continue their work with refugees who are currently in Minnesota.
Micaela Schuneman, the International Institute’s director of immigration and refugee services, said her organization is raising money to cover the costs of essential services for 58 families who arrived before Trump’s orders.
One of those families includes Fardowsa Abdi Aden’s family, who reunited with loved ones in Minneapolis on January 17, just days before Trump’s inauguration.
“I am so happy that I almost feel like crying,” Fardowsa told Sahan Journal upon her arrival in Minnesota.
The International Institute said it had 46 refugee clients whose flights to Minnesota were cancelled after Trump ordered a pause on resettlement. The families were from Myanmar, Somalia, Honduras, Venezuela and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“Halting refugee resettlement will keep families living in Minnesota separated from family members abroad waiting to be resettled,” read a statement issued by the International Institute. “It will also suspend a program that supports legal immigration and helps address our state’s workforce shortage.”
More than 200 refugees were scheduled for resettlement locally in the coming months through Arrive Ministries. “Unfortunately, these cases have now been suspended indefinitely,” read a statement from Arrive.
At least 37 other refugees were originally scheduled for resettlement through Lutheran Social Services of Minnesota, said Alexis Oberdorfer, the organization’s senior vice president of services.
Local resettlement agencies said they won’t let the president’s orders stop them from doing other valuable resettlement work. Many plan to continue holding classes and employment training for refugees who are already in Minnesota.
Trump’s orders have also impacted other types of work with refugees beyond resettlement.
The St. Paul-based Center for Victims of Torture, which serves refugees and asylum seekers around the world, laid off 75% of its employees — 430 out of a total of 580 — and stopped operations in Ethiopia, Jordan and Uganda.
Trump’s order has dire consequences, said Scott Roehm, the center’s director of global policy and advocacy. The order “gave us no choice” but to begin laying off staff, he added.
“It is devastating for the organization, the staff who have lost their jobs, and most heartbreakingly, for the survivors that all of those staff were providing care,” Roehm said. “In some cases, this is quite literally, the care we are providing [is] life-saving, and quite literally taking it away [is] putting lives at risk.”
At one of the center’s international programs, 25% of its new clients in 2024 were struggling with thoughts of suicide, he added.
Many of the center’s clients have family members who “may be attempting” to resettle in the United States as refugees, according to a written statement from Sara Nelson, the center’s program manager at the St. Paul Healing Center.
“For the survivors that we see, separation from family is one of the hardest and most debilitating aspects of the pain they’re trying to work through,” Roehm said. “The uncertainty of what’s happening to their family, that they can’t control who remains outside the U.S. and not be able to be with them together inside the U.S. – it’s profoundly harmful.”
After nearly two decades in the field, he said, the past five days “have maybe been the five hardest days of my professional career.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar responds
Kilo Kisongo, who co-founded Voices in the Wilderness, said he’s deeply worried about Trump’s orders, but wasn’t completely surprised by the turn of events.
In 1996, Kisongo fled war in his home country, the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly known as Zaire. His family lived in refugee camps before settling in Minnesota in 2001.
He paid close attention to Trump’s speeches on the campaign trail, at the inauguration and as he signed executive orders. One moment stood out to him — last October, Trump made false claims about Congolese people, saying in a campaign speech in Wisconsin that prisoners from “the Congo” were being released into America.
Kilo Kisongo, pictured January 29, 2025, co-founded Voices in the Wilderness, an organization that helps resettle Congolese refugees in Minnesota. Credit: Aaron Nesheim | Sahan Journal
“There was already a lot to expect from him that was going to affect our people,” Kisongo said, adding that the false claims heightened anxiety in the Congolese community.
Kisongo said Minnesota-bound flights were cancelled for refugees from Kenya and Tanzania.
About 1,600 Afghan refugees who assisted American troops and fought for the former United States-backed Afghan government are among those stranded by Trump’s order, according to the Associated Press. That includes unaccompanied minors, parents whose children are already in the United States and family members of U.S. military personnel. Refugees who assisted the United States are at risk of Taliban retaliation, as reported by the Associated Press.
Nasreen Sajady, executive director of the Minneapolis-based Afghan Cultural Society, said many Afghan lives are endangered by Trump’s pause on resettlement.
“It’s a lot of different people that were promised by the U.S. to come here in exchange for their assistance, and they lied to them,” said Sajady. “It’s completely tragic.”
Afghan refugees represent the third-largest displaced population in the world after Syrian and Ukrainian refugees, according to the United Nations.
Trump’s orders place a 90-day freeze on refugee resettlement and federal funding for foreign-aid programs so his administration can evaluate whether to keep funding that work.
During that time, refugees are only allowed to resettle in the United States on a case-by-case basis through a joint decision by the secretary of state and the secretary of homeland security.
“What the President really is doing by creating these constitutional crises with his executive orders is he wants to drown the system. He wants us to live in fear,” U.S. House Representative Ilhan Omar said in an interview with Sahan Journal. “He wants there to be chaos so that things end up happening in the dark and people feel like there’s not much that they can do.”
Omar, a Democrat, emphasized that Congress has the constitutional power to decide on how federal funds are allocated.
“We have power. We do not have to consent, and we have to resist his interest in becoming a dictator [on] day one by defending our Constitution,” she said.
Refugee advocates said the orders won’t change their missions. Kisongo said his organization is small, but he hopes it continues to grow despite the Trump administration.
“It might take four years. It might take two years,” he said. “Yes, it’s [Trump’s orders] gonna hurt us, but it’s not gonna be there forever anyways, and we’re just hoping that maybe the next person who comes won’t be Trump-like.”