On the afternoon of Friday, Jan. 31, World Relief, an evangelical charity that helps resettle refugees around the world, but especially in the U.S., got an order from the U.S. Department of State to stop all work under its contract with the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. This was confusing, since that evening a group of Afghans who had served alongside Americans in the long-running conflict there were arriving into Sacramento airport, and the nonprofit group was contracted by State to take care of them.
“It said, stop all work,” says Matthew Soerens, the vice president of advocacy and policy for World Relief. “But we were not going to not show up at the airport. We were not going to not make sure that they had a place to sleep that night and a warm meal.” It’s not a heavy lift to meet people at an airport and buy them a meal. What worries the folks at World Relief more is who was going to pay their rent for the next 90 days? Usually that time period is covered by federal money distributed through various partners so that refugees have time to get on their feet and find a job, but now the State Department has ordered World Relief and other charities to immediately cease doing that. And who was going to pay rent for the thousands of other families World Relief was supporting, both in the U.S. and overseas?
Since the inauguration, the incoming Administration has imposed spending freezes and stop-work orders on a wide swath of American foreign-aid enterprises. Funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)—which, at roughly $40 billion, accounts for less than 1% of the federal budget—was paused for 90 days on all but a very narrow set of programs, mostly involving life-threatening hunger or medical emergencies. Many USAID contractors and staff were fired or put on administrative leave, the USAID website was closed down, and similar cuts were made to the developmental and humanitarian programs of the State Department.
On Feb. 4,…
