HIAS President Mark Hetfield first joined the refugee resettlement and advocacy nonprofit as a caseworker in 1989, when America’s doors to the world’s “huddled masses” were pushed open. Since President Donald Trump took office in January and began issuing executive orders, funding for refugee work in the United States and around the world has ground to a halt, forcing Hetfield to fire or furlough hundreds of employees in the United States and around the world — including more than 100 people from its U.S. headquarters, or 40% of its total workforce — and close many of the organization’s international offices. Many of those who have been let go are co-workers that Hetfield has known for decades.

These initial Trump administration moves are only the beginning, Hetfield told eJewishPhilanthropy. “By Oct. 1 [when the federal fiscal year ends], we’ll be a very different agency with a much smaller footprint.”

The executive orders rocked the refugee support landscape almost the moment Trump took office. Two days after his inauguration, the president halted the acceptance of all refugees, canceling travel for thousands of already approved refugees, stranding them around the world, including in Iran, where many Jews have waited to flee since 2016. 

During Trump’s first term, he also sought to prevent refugees from coming into the country, but supported those caught in limbo overseas — when they were not in their home country, but not yet in America. Days into his second term, his White House halted all foreign aid, shuttering HIAS programing that served over 450,000 displaced people around the world. Even in Israel, where much of HIAS’ work is privately funded, the nonprofit said that the administration’s cuts forced it to fire several staff members who were attempting to resettle Eritrean and South Sudanese asylum seekers out of Israel.

The new administration also reneged on contracts with resettlement agencies that provided 90 days of case management to recently resettled refugees. Traditionally, the government paid for the work after it was completed, leaving agencies to foot the bill on work they had already started. 

“We never, ever thought, in our worst-case scenario planning, that they would literally rip up all of our contracts and grant agreements,” Hetfield said.

The repercussions of these firings and closures will ripple throughout the Jewish world, especially when it comes to interfaith work, Guila Franklin Siegel, COO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, told eJP.

“This sacred work allows us to collaborate with other faith communities and to seek allyship with other minority groups,” Franklin Siegel said, “which is key to increasing mutual respect and cultural awareness in pursuit of a stronger, more compassionate and just society for all people.”

Formerly known as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, HIAS historically resettled and advocated for Jewish immigrants in the United States, especially those from the former Soviet Union, but has for some years now worked predominantly with non-Jewish refugees. Especially overseas, HIAS may be non-Jews only connection to Jews or Judaism, Hetfield said, allowing the organization to use its standing to combat antisemitism.

“The Jewish humanitarian sector is very tiny, and having Jewish agencies out there fulfilling humanitarian work and helping people, not because they’re Jewish, but because we are, is really important,” Hetfield said. “You can count the number of agencies that do that on less than one hand, and, to any extent, we were by far the largest.”

According to Hetfield, this was seen in the wake of the Oct. 7 terror attacks in Israel, when he said he felt deep empathy from his partners in the refugee resettlement community. “The faith groups work so closely together that I did feel a lot of support from colleagues,” Hetfield said. These relationships are strong enough to last, “even if refugee resettlement goes into hibernation for the next four years.”

All refugee resettlement agencies are downsizing, not just HIAS, and staff are cast into a job market with little prospect for work in their chosen field. This comes after a particularly difficult year for HIAS, during which it had to let go of over 20% of staff after a financial error caused them to go over budget by more than $20 million.

Ex-employees are “competing for employment with massive numbers of other people who were laid off at the same time,” Hetfield said. “These are people that are completely dedicated to humanitarian work, and they’re gonna have to find something else to do.”

Attacks on immigration are steeped in antisemitism, Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, told eJP, citing white supremacists screaming “Jews Will Not Replace Us” at the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., and the 2018 shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh that killed 11 people. 

Both incidents were caused by a conspiracy theory known as “the great replacement theory,” in which people believe Jews are trying to replace white people with non-white immigrants. The Tree of Life was specifically chosen for the attack due to a connection with HIAS — the shooter targeted Jews, he said, because HIAS was bringing “invaders to kill (his) people.”

Historically, HIAS has received 60% of its funding from government sources. In the wake of the cuts, donors have stepped up dramatically, Hetfield said, “but it is not going to make up for the shortfall, nor will it be sustained.”

Every week or two, HIAS sends partner agencies a spreadsheet detailing which HIAS employee is performing which role, because the roster keeps shifting, Robin Mencher, CEO of Jewish Family and Community Services East Bay, told eJP. Her agency has also had to lay off employees because of the refugee programming cuts. “I don’t know any HIAS affiliate who didn’t lay off employees,” she said.

One affiliate who hasn’t, for the time being, is Temple B’nai Israel in Oklahoma City, which launched a refugee resettlement program in partnership with HIAS last year, receiving its first refugee in September and bringing in 56 before the executive orders halted the program. The synagogue had doubled the amount of refugees that it would resettle in anticipation of Trump possibly taking office. 

Unlike other HIAS partners, B’nai Israel’s resettlement program, which has two full-time staff, has “the flexibility of having a no-cost management team,” its program director, Harold Ginzburg, told eJP. He noted that he “may be the only program director who doesn’t draw a salary,” and the program, which is only one of two run out of a synagogue, involves numerous congregant volunteers.

With the doors effectively closed to refugees, the congregation pivoted to bringing in Afghans who had put their life in danger to work with or for the U.S. government. They hold Special Immigrant Visas, and are the only group still allowed into the U.S. Even though their travel has been canceled, their documents to enter the U.S. have been approved if they can find their own way here — at least for now.

Temple B’nai Israel’s refugee program has been able to dip into a memorial fund run by Ginzburg’s family, and HIAS also pushed for the congregation to receive a $69,000 grant to continue providing services to refugees already here. The temple is also one of over 100 nonprofits, including 18 affiliated with HIAS, that received $25,000 grants from the Shapiro Foundation, based in Needham, Mass. 

The Shapiro Foundation’s emergency funds aim to cover the 90 days the government was contracted for.

“We’re just taking this a step at a time,” Larry Tobin, executive director of the Shapiro Foundation, told eJP. “The most immediate goal is that America has a legal, but more importantly, a moral or an ethical contract with every family that arrived in America, lawfully, through the United States refugee resettlement program. And regardless of what happens in the future, regardless of politics, we have an ethical and legal responsibility to ensure these families are fully welcomed in that initial 90 days and on a path towards full integration and self-sufficiency.”

Hetfield said HIAS is shifting to a “completely different business model,” based more around volunteer networks, which they have grown over the past decade, especially with their more than 100 Welcome Circles, often synagogues supporting refugees during their first days in the U.S. Migrants already here continue to need support, especially parolees from Ukraine, Afghanistan, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, as well as other asylum seekers and Temporary Protected Status holders who may be at risk of having their status revoked at any moment. 

HIAS has also launched and joined a series of lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s executive orders, but even if they win those cases, the administration is expected to go through with its plans to shutter the programs eventually, Hetfield said. Still, he said, “if we manage to bring in a person, a family, a few 100 people, that will make it all worthwhile. That keeps us going. We can actually change many lives, even with a short-lived success.”

Although many Jewish multi-service agencies such as Jewish Family Services and Jewish Family and Community Services aren’t getting hit as hard as agencies that only do refugee work, “that’s only true for a limited amount of time,” Mencher said. “When Medicaid gets cut, it’s going to hit more of our service lines. I don’t think this is over.”

Much of the work these multi-service agencies do is supporting Holocaust survivors through federally funded programing. If that gets cut, she said, it will be devastating.  

“Unlike a skilled, educated refugee with work experience, who comes here with their family… and a future ahead of them and is ready to do whatever it takes to make it work, our youngest Holocaust survivors in our world are in their early 80s,” Mencher said. “They don’t have other options. They’re not suddenly going to go out and get a job. Those are some of the most concerning cuts that are lingering just on the horizon.”