Benedicte Chubaka’s family members were slated to fly to the U.S. from Uganda through a refugee resettlement program. After undergoing a week of medical checkups, a final step before reuniting with Chubaka, their flight was canceled, and they received the news they would not be granted refugee status after President Donald Trump’s administration put a pause on all resettlement programs.

The University of Iowa graduate student’s great uncle, aunt, and their children were set to resettle in San Antonio, Texas, before being notified that they would not come to the U.S.

The family had fled the Democratic Republic of Congo, or DRC, and were refugees in Uganda. Data from the Council on Foreign Relations shows internal conflict and genocide in the DRC have led to six million deaths since 1996.

Escalation of violence in the country since January 2025 has also increased the number of people displaced to an all-time high of 7.3 million and forced more than 86,000 to flee to neighboring countries, according to data by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR.

Chubaka’s extended family were planning to attend her wedding in June, but now she does not know when she will see them again.

She said seeing her family’s plans to come to the U.S. collapse and disappear so quickly made her very emotional. She is unsure if her family will get another opportunity to come to the U.S.

The U.S. vetting process to determine whether to accept a refugee for resettlement takes roughly two years. To receive refugee status in the U.S., a person must first be referred by the UNHCR, a U.S. embassy, or a designated nongovernmental organization to be considered for resettlement.

Then, they must pass background checks and security clearance processes, go through in-person interviews to determine if they qualify, undergo medical screening, and then match with a sponsor agency.

Chubaka’s family was in the last few steps of the process — medical screening.

Unless Chubaka’s family is granted refugee status in the next six months, their medical checkups will expire, and they will have to go through that stage of the process again.

Trump paused refugee resettlement processing and halted all federal funding for resettlement programs with an executive order on his first day in office. The president cited concerns about the U.S.’s ability to take in large numbers of refugees.

Iowa’s congressional delegation says the programs are on hold while they investigate the potential for waste, fraud, and abuse.

The initiative upended several families’ lives and left refugee resettlement programs, including those in Iowa, with no federal support.

According to a document obtained by the Associated Press, a little more than 10,000 refugees who had already been vetted and approved to enter the U.S., including Chubaka’s family, have been left behind with no answers.

As litigation over the freeze plays out in court, a federal U.S. appeals court ruled that the Trump administration does have the right to pause refugee resettlement efforts; but the ruling requires the administration to admit the roughly 10,000 people granted refugee status before Jan. 20.

Chubaka said in an email, as of April 1, there has been no change to her family’s status or situation.

As the pause continues, Iowa’s refugee resettlement programs, such as the Catherine McAuley Center, face severe depletions of funds and have been forced to lay off staff.

Iowa programs, families suffer cuts to federal support

Because of Trump’s order and a stop work order from the U.S. State Department, the Catherine McAuley Center has laid off half its staff— 20 employees — and lost 60 percent of its funding since January.

Director of the Catherine McAuley Center Anne Dugger said the organization anticipated cuts under the Trump administration but assumed they would be given more time to make adjustments rather than need to react quickly to an abrupt message on Friday, Jan. 24, at 4:30 p.m.

The center had five refugee resettlement cases slotted to arrive in February. The individuals had plane tickets and were cleared to travel before receiving the notice they no longer received refugee status from the U.S.

Overall, the center lost $3 million in federal funding. Dugger said they received a few thousand dollars in reimbursement funds, but the amount is nowhere near what the center requires, as they had expected tens of thousands in reimbursements.

“We got the brunt of it right up front, and now we’re just trying to regroup,” Dugger said.

The center is affiliated with the United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, or USCRI, a nongovernmental, nonprofit international organization that works with affiliates to provide legal, social, and health services to refugees.

Director of the USCRI’s Des Moines Field Office Samantha Huynh said the office had to lay off 50 percent, or 14, full-time employees as a result of the funding cuts.

Four resettlement agencies in the Des Moines area were scheduled to receive a total of 480 refugees before the freeze was announced, Huynh said, and her agency had 50 individuals scheduled for resettlement in February, many coming from the Republic of Congo, Thailand, and Afghanistan.

Huynh is charged with the task of informing families that their relatives will not be coming to the U.S. and that there is no more known information.

“It’s very disheartening,” she said. “We have families that haven’t seen each other for over 10 years. During the war in their home country, they get separated, not knowing where they are, not knowing if they’re even alive, and then to get the news that their family is coming, there’s so much joy and so much hope built up to that point, and then to find out that they’re no longer coming, and we are the ones that have to break the news to them.”

Huynh said pausing refugee services will negatively impact the economy and harm diversity in Iowa.

Data from the American Immigration Council found that refugees paid $89.6 million in local and state taxes in Iowa in the last fiscal year. The data shows that refugees in the Hawkeye state had $844.6 million in spending power, which was money they were likely to put into Iowa’s economy.

“Refugees bring a lot of diversity into the state,” Hunyh said. “You have all these different restaurants, bakeries, grocery stores that are owned by former refugees and immigrants. How is that going to look?”

Huynh said the best part of her job is letting people know they will be reunited with their families and preparing for refugees to arrive. Now, instead, Huynh and her team have to deliver the news that families, despite having undergone the entire process and receiving a plane ticket, will not be coming.

“When the executive order took place, every day, slowly, we started seeing flight cancellations one at a time,” she said. “So, it wasn’t all at once, where you feel that hurt and share the bad news to families. It was every time we got that notice, and that was almost daily. As the staff and I had to go through that, it’s kind of like we were going through that heartbreak every day.”

Iowa politicians urge a pause is necessary

Many of Iowa’s Republican congressional delegation said in interviews with The Daily Iowan in Washington, D.C., that the funding pause is needed to reevaluate the refugee resettlement process for potential waste.

“I do think a pause is appropriate, and I don’t think that’s going to affect how we as Iowans perceive people who come to our state and how we welcome people, such as the Vietnamese boat people,” U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, said.

Iowa has a storied history of welcoming refugees into the state and offering supporting services.

Former Iowa Gov. Robert Ray made Iowa the first state to welcome refugees displaced by the Vietnam War. Ray established a task force to resettle 1,200 Tai Dam refugees and later welcome other Vietnamese refugees.

The Hawkeye state continued its commitment to resettle refugees by welcoming Eastern Europeans in the late 1980s and Bosnians in the 1990s.

U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, pointed to the importance of refugee resettlement for Iowa and Ray’s work to help the effort.

Ernst said it must be ensured that funding for such services is being spent well and that dollars are being used to further American interests.

“While we evaluate all of that, there has been a pause, but already, some of those dollars have been restored,” Ernst said. “So, I do anticipate we’ll see more of that in the future. But again, we just want to make sure that taxpayer dollars are being safeguarded, but at the same time, yes, refugee resettlement is important.”

Miller-Meeks and Ashley Hinson expressed similar sentiments about ensuring money going to the program is used as efficiently as possible.

Miller-Meeks said the pause aligns with Iowa’s values, and the Biden administration was too loose with granting refugee status on the southern border.

“I think that there needed to be some restructuring and some pause so that we have a handle on what’s a refugee and their true refugee status,” she said.

There needs to be knowledge and vetting of who’s coming into the U.S., Miller-Meeks said, pointing to the record-high U.S.-Mexico border crossings under former President Joe Biden.

RELATED: Iowa City area immigration, resettlement programs worry of fallout of Trump’s immigration plans

Hinson said the review of all federal spending and all federal programs is important, and the government has to “peel back the onion” to make sure taxpayer dollars advance U.S. interests. There is a place for refugee resettlement, she said, and the pause is preventing dollars from going to wasteful spending.

The congresswoman said she would like to advocate for speeding up the processes if people are in unsafe situations; however, she said these spending reviews take time.

“We have to balance all of those things, and sometimes those things do take time,” Hinson said.

Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart and leaders of the state’s refugee resettlement push for humanitarian practices.

Hart said immigration and refugee policies are something the nation has struggled with for too long, and we need solutions that hold up humanitarian values and treat people with respect, no matter where they come from.

“We’ve got to be humanitarian,” Hart said. “We’ve got to make sure that we’re treating people in a way that we can be proud of.”

The pause does not align with Iowa’s values, both Dugger and Huynh said.

Dugger said the refugee resettlement process is not inefficient, and the funding pause should have been enacted in a more humane way.

The pause also impacts families already resettled in the U.S.

Trump’s cuts to the refugee resettlement program don’t only impact refugees trying to come to the U.S. but also those currently in the country.

The USCRI and Catherine McAuley Center have shifted their focus to further support families already resettled in the U.S., however, funding cuts severely limit their programs.

The USCRI’s Des Moines Field Office shifted its priorities to help resettled refugees become self-sufficient by maintaining housing, enrolling in school, and finding employment.

The organization also offers English classes, provides legal services, provides case management for medical needs, and offers youth programs.

Both operating with half of their staff and a slashed budget, Huynh and Dugger said offering these critical services is extremely difficult.

The Catherine McAuley Center is no longer able to offer long term case management for refugees in the area, including rent and utility assistance. The center is still able to help with employment, Dugger said, but not to the extent that they could before the funding pause.

Dugger said the center was able to keep two people to help with resource navigation and get everyone into permanent housing.

“It’s just hurt the families that we brought here and that we said we would take care of. Not having that funding is really, really difficult,” Dugger said.

The center is continuing education services for refugees, utilizing the services to help with employment, health, and resource navigation.

“What else to say other than I’m just heartbroken for all of them, and if we can, we’ll help them and support them as much as possible with even just a listening ear,” Dugger said. “But there’s just no recourse for these families.”

Chubaka, who currently serves as a refugee support specialist for the U.S. Bureau of Refugee Services, went through the refugee resettlement process as a child when she and her family came to the U.S. roughly 13 years ago.

She said she has fuzzy memories of the dangerous journey leaving the Democratic Republic of Congo; she just remembers always being on the go, always hiding until they made it to Uganda.

She and her family stayed in a refugee camp for months, and she remembers she and her brother were often sick because of the overcrowding and lack of sanitation. Chubaka’s parents decided to move them to Kampala, Uganda’s capital, and from there, the family began the process to try and enter the U.S.

Chubaka said the process took roughly 10 years, and the family was resettled in Houston, Texas.

As soon as she got into high school, she immediately started mentoring refugees or working with agencies that were resettling.

“Once the refugees come here, they need a lot of support to be able to know where to go for certain things, what to do for certain things, questions that need to be answered. Just that guidance,” she said.

Chubaka said the children in her family who were slated to come to the U.S. were so excited, and it broke her heart when she found out they would no longer be coming. However, she still maintains hope that she and many others will be reunited with their families.

“I just want to inform everyone to not be fearful,  to not be worried, but to just have hope because that’s the only thing that can keep us and sustain us, to get to the results that we will eventually get to,” she said. “Let’s not give up on hope and to not let fear rule over us.”