IRIS Layoffs Mount Amid Refugee Halt

IRIS (Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services) has laid off 20 percent of its staff — approximately 20 people — in the wake of President Donald Trump’s decisions to stop all new refugees from entering the country and halt federal funding to assist those who have recently arrived. 

As the organization adjusts to a new era of federal hostility toward its mission, New Haven’s state and federal representatives are working to fight back.

State and federal lawmakers gathered Friday afternoon alongside representatives of IRIS and other nonprofits for a roundtable discussion about the implications of the Trump administration’s immigration and refugee policies. The discussion took place at Fair Haven Community Health Care (FHCHC) on Grand Avenue.

Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz convened the conversation with U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, State Sen. Gary Winfield, state Department of Social Services Commissioner Andrea Barton Reeves, IRIS Director Maggie Mitchell Salem, Connecticut ACLU’s B. Rae Perryman, and FHCHC Director Suzanne Lagarde.

The dialogue focused on two Trump policies announced the week prior: an executive order suspending U.S. refugee resettlement and a ​“stop work order” halting federal grants to refugee resettlement agencies across the country.

The stop work order placed two of IRIS’ funding streams in jeopardy: a $3 million contract through the State Department’s Reception and Placement Program to cover the first 90 days of assistance for refugees arriving this year, as well as $1 million for refugee sponsorship under the Welcome Corps program started in 2023.

According to Salem, IRIS has laid off 20 percent of its staff in the last week as a result, including people who helped newly-arrived refugees find housing, employment, education, and healthcare under the two halted programs. Refugees who have arrived to Connecticut within the last 90 days have no longer been able to receive that kind of assistance in the wake of the stop work order. Salem said she expects IRIS to have to downsize further in the future.

Many of IRIS’ staff members are themselves refugees, Salem said at the roundtable. 

“I have a Ukrainian colleague who is a single mom with two kids … She’s a journalist and she was afraid for what it might mean if her country was taken over for her and her family,” Salem said. ​“I work alongside Afghans who supported U.S. forces and came to the U.S. a few years ago, and they’re still waiting for family to come. Some of them were expecting travel orders for their family at any time. All of that stopped.” 

Salem stressed that refugees from all over the world are fleeing war, famine, ethnic cleansing, and political retaliation. ​“We’re talking about the world’s most vulnerable people,” she said.

Prior to Trump’s executive order, refugees had to make it through a rigorous screening process in order to enter the United States. In Fiscal Year 2024, the Biden administration allowed 100,034 refugees to resettle in the United States. According to the United Nations, there are currently 37.9 million refugees globally who have fled their country of origin due to persecution, war, or violence.

The legislators stressed that many of Trump’s funding freeze efforts go beyond what the president can legally do.

“The power of the purse appropriating dollars falls to the senate,” U.S. Rep. DeLauro said. ​“The executive office has no apparent legal authority to do this.”

This is ​“theft of taxpayer money,” said Sen. Blumenthal. ​“It’s going into tax cuts” that will ultimately benefit the country’s most wealthy, he predicted.

Among those affected by the new policies are tens of thousands of Afghans who risked their lives to aid the U.S. military over the course of decades, and who were promised Special Immigrant Visas.

“These are, many of them, people in hiding,” now under the Taliban’s rule, said Salem.

Blumenthal noted, ​“My son Matt in Afghanistan relied on his interpreter to literally protect him while they were in harm’s way. IRIS is in effect protecting the people who protected our troops: the families and others who now have targets on their back.”

DeLauro and Blumenthal said they are determined to try and convince their Republican colleagues to stand by refugees. 

Meanwhile, advocates are questioning whether the state may be able to step in where federal funding has been wrested away.

The ACLU’s Perryman pointed to the state’s budget surpluses averaging $1.8 billion over the last seven years — funding currently restricted by the state legislature’s hotly debated ​“fiscal guardrails.”

Perryman called on the state to ​“loosen some of those fiscal guardrails” in order to continue funding services for refugees and other communities targeted by the federal government. 

“This is a time for bravery,” she said.

“We will have a fulsome conversation, as you know, Lt. Gov., on what we’re doing with these fiscal guardrails,” promised State Sen. Winfield, a staunch advocate for loosening the guardrails who has conflicted with Gov. Ned Lamont on the issue.