SEATTLE (CN) — A coalition of refugees and agencies serving refugees are challenging President Donald Trump’s executive order indefinitely pausing a refugee resettlement program and slashing federal funding to refugee processing and services with a new lawsuit filed in federal court in Seattle on Monday.
The executive order at issue, “Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program,” calls for major upheaval to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, including the suspension of admissions until officials can determine whether further admission of refugees “aligns with the interests of the United States.”
The three agencies behind the lawsuit argue that the suspension violates Congress’ authority to make immigration laws.
“The United States has a moral and legal obligation to protect refugees, and the longer this illegal suspension continues, the more dire the consequences will be,” said Melissa Keaney, senior supervising attorney with the International Refugee Assistance Project, the firm representing the plaintiffs, said in a statement.
“Refugees and the families and communities waiting to welcome them have been thrown into indefinite limbo and the resettlement agencies ready to serve them don’t know if they can keep the lights on if the government continues to withhold critical funding,” she added.
Pacito — one of the nine individual named plaintiffs in the case — said he fled war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo when he was 13 years old, but was approved to resettle in the U.S. when his travel was canceled on Jan. 22, despite the executive order stating the suspension would take place on Jan. 27.
“That night, my wife, my baby and I slept outside the transit center in the parking lot, along with other refugee families waiting to travel to the United States,” Pacito said in a statement. “In the morning, they told us President Trump had canceled all refugee travel. Now I don’t know what we’re going to do, we have nothing.”
With the new executive order, admissions have ceased, abruptly canceling travel for people like the nine individual plaintiffs named in the suit. The agencies estimate over 20,000 refugees were approved and ready for travel as of January 2025, with thousands more in earlier stages of processing.
The nine individual refugees identified in the suit only by their first names join Church World Service, Lutheran Community Services Northwest and HIAS, a trio of faith-based refugee services, as plaintiffs in the suit.
“The American Jewish community knows the heart of the refugees, for we were once refugees ourselves,” Mark Hetfield, president of HIAS, said in a statement. “Today, Trump has even slammed the door in the face of Christians, Jews and Baha’i fleeing Iran, as well as refugees from everywhere else.”
The plaintiff agencies receive a significant portion of their funding from the federal government and “are already struggling to keep their lights on and their staff employed, let alone continue to serve the vulnerable refugees at the core of their missions,” they write in the complaint.
Because of the executive order and suspension notices, the agencies haven’t been reimbursed for millions of dollars the State Department owes them for work in November and December of last year, they say in the complaint.
“Shutting down this proven and congressionally-mandated program irrevocably harms tens of thousands of vulnerable refugee families we have pledged to support while blocking our faith communities from continuing to live out our calling,” said Rick Santos, president and CEO of Church World Service, said in a statement.
Congress enacted the Refugee Act in 1980, which details the policies and procedures governing refugee admission and resettlement in the country known collectively as the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. The act allows the president to determine the number of refugees that the country can admit in a fiscal year. Late last year, former President Joe Biden set that number at 125,000 for the fiscal year of 2025.
The agencies are asking the court to issue a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to block the Trump administration from enforcing the ban and declare the executive order unlawful.