On the evening of January 20, Ángel and his wife relaxed on the bed in the room they rent from a family they know only a little. The woman looked at the same message on her phone she had been reading for what felt like forever: Your case was received, was all it ever said.
Eight months ago, Ángel applied for a program that allowed Nicaraguans to enter the United States legally and work for a couple of years. The message from the American government did not change after Ángel came to Los Angeles on a tourist visa to rejoin his wife, who thanks to the program was already working as a hotel housekeeper. The message did not change despite promises from the business that had charged roughly $4,000 to “sponsor” them for the program, or despite their later realization that the business was defrauding them and the US government.
Ángel and his wife weren’t foolish to hope. The Biden administration designed the program, called humanitarian parole, for people like them—a way to flee the dangers of Nicaragua, where armed robbers had twice broken into their home, without violating America’s borders. Courts had upheld the program. And Ángel was the kind of immigrant Americans might welcome: an accountant who had worked for a consulting company helping Christian ministries overseas.
But this time, they both knew there was no point anymore in checking. President Donald Trump had just terminated the program, within hours of returning to the White House. This time, when the phone went dark, a beacon of hope blinked off.
“We’re heartbroken. We have to change all our plans,” said Ángel, who fears he will be deported if he uses his full name. “We keep hoping to find some light in all of this.”
In the first week of Trump’s second term, a flurry of executive orders and policy memos thrust immigrant communities nationwide into anxious uncertainty. Millions of people like Ángel, in the country with permission from federal authorities, now wonder what that permission is really worth. Thousands of refugees, already approved by the government and with plane tickets in hand for resettlement to the US, are learning that the government has cancelled their travel.
The president made curbing immigration his central 2024 campaign issue, promising “the largest deportation in history.” On his first day in office, he moved swiftly on that pledge, signing ten executive orders and issuing other proclamations aimed at reshaping nearly every facet of the country’s immigration system.
Thousands of screening appointments for asylum seekers were abruptly deleted. Biden-era parole programs, which allowed migrants from certain countries to come to the United States for a limited period and work, were ordered to close. All refugee resettlement was halted indefinitely. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) gained expanded powers to deport undocumented immigrants without legal proceedings.
And in a shock to ministry groups late Friday, the administration suspended funding to organizations, most of them faith-based, that assist refugees already living and working legally in the country. The announcement was one in a series of moves apparently designed to thwart charity toward foreign-born groups.
The developments are a jarring plunge on the roller coaster that refugee resettlement has ridden in recent years. More than 100,000 refugees came to the US in 2024, a 30-year record and a dramatic change from record low numbers during the first Trump administration.
Refugees come to the United States fleeing violence or persecution, often persecution for being Christians. Getting approval for resettlement can take years and involves multiple international organizations, including vetting by federal agencies. Many advocates say the refugee program has suffered collateral damage in political debates over illegal immigration.
Ryan Dupree, a pastor at First Baptist Church of Columbia in South Carolina, has helped many refugee families build a new life in America. His church planted a congregation led by refugees from Myanmar. He’s watched state politicians in the past try to stop resettlement programs, confusing refugees with undocumented immigrants. “It was toxic,” Dupree told CT in an interview. “It was a lot of misinformation. That just makes our ministry harder when we are trying to help people who are coming here from a hard situation.”
The dizzying pace of the administration’s actions has been “a lot to process,” said Susan Sperry, who oversees the Chicago offices of World Relief, the humanitarian arm of the National Association of Evangelicals. What the administration “released on Day One is essentially what took four years to do, policy-wise, in the first term.”
Especially significant for churches and faith-based ministries: The administration on Tuesday removed longstanding restrictions on conducting deportation raids in schools, houses of worship, and hospitals. Immigration authorities have historically discouraged agents from entering so-called sensitive locations to enforce immigration laws, except in special cases.
The events of the last seven days are not merely a return to 2017 Trump policies. Multiple ministry leaders told CT they are “next level” and “unprecedented.”
Just as school districts from California to Kentucky to New York are emailing staff about what to do if ICE agents show up on campus, pastors at immigrant churches are briefing parishioners on their legal rights during encounters with immigration enforcement.
Rev. Gabriel Salguero, pastor of The Gathering Place, an Assemblies of God congregation in Orlando, Florida, said “these changes have sent a chill down the spine of the Latino evangelical church.”
Salguero, who also leads the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, is especially concerned by the prospect of ICE agents entering church buildings or waiting outside after worship services. He said he’s gotten “hundreds of calls and texts” from pastors nervous about how the sensitive locations change could affect activities, ESL classes, and food pantries. A teacher in New Jersey phoned him, worried about parents who have stopped sending their children to school.
“We don’t ask people about their citizenship status to give them Communion or to provide food for them,” Salguero said. “We’re just trying to follow the gospel mandate to love our neighbor.”
No group felt the effects of last week more immediately than refugees. Even before the inauguration, World Relief, one of the nation’s ten resettlement agencies, had begun notifying refugee families scheduled to fly to the US that their trips had been cancelled by the State Department.
By Day Four of the new Trump administration, more than 500 cancellations had poured in. World Relief staff began calling and visiting relatives—many of whom had been waiting years to reunite with their loved ones and were busy planning airport welcome parties—with the grim news that they would have to wait months, perhaps years, for another chance. The organization expects hundreds more cancellations this week. Global Refuge, a Lutheran resettlement agency, by Saturday had received 1,499 cancellations.
Trump’s halt to the refugee program is for 90 days, though staff at multiple agencies said they anticipated it would last much longer. In total, the ban affects more than 10,000 refugees previously approved to travel.
Immigrant ministries also scrambled over the weekend to make sense of a new administration memo sent Friday afternoon that appears to bar them from using government funds to assist refugees already in the United States. The memo, which was reviewed by CT, orders aid groups to stop refugee services programs such as job placement, English classes, and housing assistance if they are paid for by federal grants. That includes services provided to Afghans who served with the US military during the war.
“Effective immediately upon receipt of this Notice of Suspension the Recipient must stop all work under the award(s) and not incur any new costs,” the memo says, referring to State Department grants. This comes on top of an executive order earlier in the week directing the government to scrutinize federal funding to any nonprofit “providing services, either directly or indirectly, to removable or illegal aliens.”
How much teeth these orders have in the long term is uncertain. Nonprofit groups are still assessing their impact, but they are planning for the real possibility that it could decimate their ability to serve vulnerable communities. According to government records, ministries last year received hundreds of millions of refugee assistance dollars that could be frozen.
Refugee aid groups will need to rely on churches and community groups “more than ever,” said World Relief vice president Matthew Soerens.
As for the promised great deportation: Only one week into the new administration, it had yet to fully materialize. By the end of last week, the White House announced that ICE agents were arresting between 500 and 600 people a day—fewer people than ICE arrested on an average day during much of the Obama administration.
But it’s still early. And the rhetoric may already be having its intended effect.
In Los Angeles, Ángel and his wife are weighing their options. They know they will have to leave the US—her parole will expire at the end of the year, and on Thursday the new president authorized ICE agents to strip people of their parole status even if it wasn’t expired.
The couple doesn’t want to go back to Nicaragua, but they don’t want to apply for asylum in America, either. They’ve heard rumors that Nicaraguan authorities seize the properties of people they know will not return. The Nicaraguan government, Ángel says, has informants everywhere and “knows when a person has requested asylum.”
They’ve considered going north to Canada. Or maybe they could someday get an employment visa and return to the US. They want to have a child someday. They just don’t know.
“I keep hoping this president has taken away all the opportunities because something better is coming,” Ángel said. “In truth, I still think the United States is the promised land.”
With additional reporting from Kate Shellnutt.
Andy Olsen is senior features writer at Christianity Today.
