Hundreds of new Iowa residents face more challenges as the Trump administration has ordered all resettlement agencies in the U.S. to stop providing services to refugees.
Agencies are no longer allowed to access federal funding to find homes for those fleeing persecution. Nick Wuertz, director of refugee services for Lutheran Services in Iowa, says more than 800 individuals in Iowa have now lost access to this transitional program, and more than half of them are children.
“We’re continuing to show up each day, and serve families and continue to provide services,” Wuertz says. “We don’t know yet if and how we’ll be able to pay for some of those things.”
Wuertz says resettlement agencies provide financial assistance for basic living expenses, while Lutheran Services in Iowa covers those expenses for the refugees’ first 90 days in the U.S.
“There are no other community services that do that, or that people can be referred to,” Wuertz says. “It’s really the only way that families have an opportunity to understand their new community, get on their feet, find jobs and get settled.”
Wuertz says roughly 80 percent of LSI’s funding comes from the federal government.
(By Lucia Cheng, Iowa Public Radio)