Dozens of refugees scheduled to travel to Northwest Arkansas over the next two months had their flights cancelled a week before an executive order was set to go in effect.
“We weren’t expecting it–that’s not what the executive order said,” said Joanna Krause. “The impact has been devastating.”
Joanna Krause is the Executive Director of Canopy NWA, a refugee resettlement agency based in Fayetteville. She spoke with Little Rock Public Radio Friday, at the end of a week she described as “incredibly difficult.”
President Donald Trump halted refugee resettlement in the U.S. with an executive order last Monday, disrupting travel plans for hundreds of refugees recently approved to come to the United States. 11 families assigned to Northwest Arkansas now have no clear path to resettlement.
The executive order suspends the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) effective Jan. 27, 2025 at 12:01am. But Krause said travel cancellations began immediately last Monday.
Staff and volunteers at Canopy NWA were expecting the 36 individuals to arrive in February and March. By Wednesday, all travel plans for new arrivals were cancelled. Krause said the team at Canopy spent hours talking with people who were preparing to welcome the new arrivals, some of whom were relatives of the refugees hoping to make their new homes in the U.S.
“I mean, what can you even say?” Krause said. “[Refugees] have undergone very rigorous and intensive background screenings, security checks, health checks, and in many cases waited years to be able to come. So to have gone through that whole process, to have a plane ticket and then have that cancelled is heartbreaking.”
Krause said this is the second time a suspension from the Trump administration has disrupted travel for two of the expected arrivals. According to Krause, these families were assigned to come to Northwest Arkansas through Canopy eight years ago, when resettlement was paused under a similar executive order in Trump’s first term.
“This program is a hallmark of our country. We’ve been operating refugee resettlement, refugee admission into the United States under the same processes involved. There are state funds, federal laws, the Refugee Act of 1980, so that’s decades and decades of data that shows how the program works.” Krause said.
The order says the U.S. “lacks the ability to absorb large numbers of [...] refugees into its communities in a manner that does not compromise the availability of resources for Americans, that protects their safety and security, and that ensures the appropriate assimilation of refugees.”
Refugees are some of the most vetted groups of immigrants in the United States. The process to gain refugee status is often long and arduous, with some people waiting in refugee camps for decades before being approved for resettlement.
Krause says while she’s confident resettlement will resume, she doesn’t know when, or if, there will be changes to the program. The current process requires asylum seekers to pass multiple screenings, including background, security, and health checks. Krause says even small delays in the resettlement process can upheave travel plans.
“This is a global network involving global communities, involving multiple federal regulatory processes, both in our country and internationally and on the ground. It’s not a system that can be quickly switched on and off. Any kind of delay creates backlog and requires work to be repeated — like a health screening — and it just makes it very hard.”
Krause says the current pause will only increase the backlog of refugee cases. Nearly 3.6 million cases were unresolved at the end of the 2024 fiscal year, according to a report from the Congressional Research Service in November.
“Things like the health checks are time-limited. So if they expire and there's a waiting period to resume the process it's very detrimental.”
Krause says the program is designed to prioritize family reunification.
“When people have to flee their homes it is very sad, but unfortunately much more common than you would think that families get separated. And in a place that has chaos and limited infrastructure due to war, it can take quite a while to reunite family members.”
Krause says there are many different channels for family reunification — which, like the rest of the resettlement process, is often complicated to navigate. Some reunification processes require DNA testing to prove two individuals are related.
“We have had many people from Monday contact our office and say ‘what about me, what’s going to happen to me? What’s going to happen to my family?’ and there’s very little that we can say," Krause said. "It's hard to have words of reassurance or be able to provide any clarity, which I would love to do, because we definitely don’t have that information.”
In the meantime, Krause says Canopy will continue supporting each refugee that comes through their doors and helping succeed in their new home. She said the organization will be reliant on volunteers and donors to keep operating while resettlement remains suspended.
“I don’t want anybody in the community to think Canopy is going anywhere,” Krause said. “We have a mission that we are committed to to walk — a mission to see refugees in our local community to walk together and thrive together. Canopy welcomed three cases last week and we are very busy, busy with all the services that we are providing to that family along with partners across the community.”
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