"This is going to have a traumatic impact on families," says Nicky Smith, the IRC regional director who oversees Denver. "The families and the communities are definitely feeling the impact of the executive order. People are frightened, people are nervous, people don't know what's happening. We can see from the volume of calls we're getting into the office."
On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order suspending the resettlement of refugees and any decisions on refugee applications for ninety days beginning January 27. After ninety days, the Secretary of Homeland Security is slated to submit a report to the president regarding whether refugee resettlement is in the interests of the United States and if it should continue, according to the executive order.
The order blamed a lack of resources and public safety concerns as the reasons for the pause.
"The Refugee Admissions Program is one of the oldest, most established and most stable pathways for citizenship into the United States," Smith says. "The system was already vetted last time around by the Trump administration. They went over the process then. There haven't been changes to the admissions process since then."
People fleeing war and persecution in their countries have been immigrating through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program since 1980. The federal program works with refugee resettlement agencies like the IRC, a national nonprofit that Albert Einstein helped found after World War II, and local agencies like the ACC of Denver, which resettles hundreds of African refugees into Denver and Aurora each year, to find homes and resources for them to rebuild their lives.
The IRC had flights to Colorado booked for refugees in February, but those flights have been canceled and the resettlement process for those refugees will be paused for at least ninety days, Smith says; the IRC will advocate for the White House to permit a handful of refugees in the meantime.
"With no knowledge of what's going to happen post-ninety days, we have to encourage the administration to look at case-by-case examples, even during the ninety days of suspension," Smith explains. "There's vast decades now of evidence to demonstrate that the U.S. refugee admission process is one of the most secure, vetted processes."
Rhossy Ouanzin Gbebri, spokesperson for ACC of Denver, says the nonprofit had scheduled flights to Colorado between January 27 and late February for sixteen refugees from places like Sudan, but those flights were canceled last week. The nonprofit is "deeply concerned" it won't be able to help 41 other refugees who were assured by the ACC of Denver that they would be able to reunite with their families in Colorado in the coming months, Ouanzin Gbebri adds.
"With no knowledge of what's going to happen post-ninety days, we have to encourage the administration to look at case-by-case examples, even during the ninety days of suspension," Smith explains. "There's vast decades now of evidence to demonstrate that the U.S. refugee admission process is one of the most secure, vetted processes."
Rhossy Ouanzin Gbebri, spokesperson for ACC of Denver, says the nonprofit had scheduled flights to Colorado between January 27 and late February for sixteen refugees from places like Sudan, but those flights were canceled last week. The nonprofit is "deeply concerned" it won't be able to help 41 other refugees who were assured by the ACC of Denver that they would be able to reunite with their families in Colorado in the coming months, Ouanzin Gbebri adds.
"This order puts vulnerable individuals, including children and families, into a state of anxiety," Ouanzin Gbebri says. "They feel it's prolonging family separation and compounding the challenges they're already facing."
Smith notes that "this type of separation has a significant impact on people's ability to navigate and recover from their own psychological trauma."
Trump signed the order during a first-day blitz against immigration that included a declaration of emergency to send troops to the southern border and an executive order to end birthright citizenship that was blocked by a federal judge. Along with refugee resettlement, Trump halted the asylum system and shut down the CBP One app that migrants used to enter the U.S. on parole.
On January 27, Trump tried to freeze nearly all federal grants, but a federal judge temporarily blocked that order, too. Refugee resettlement agencies rely heavily on federal funding, Ouanzin Gbebri says, and the ACC of Denver has already prepared for a drop in federal funding with a hiring freeze.
Trump could also lower the refugee cap — the limit on how many refugees can be admitted into the country each year — which would also reduce federal funding. Trump lowered the cap the last time he was in office.
"It's going to be extremely difficult the next four years," Ouanzin Gbebri says. "We're just trying to focus on what's in front of us for now."
The term "refugee" has a legal definition in the U.S. that specifically applies to a person who asks, while in their native country, to come to the U.S. to flee war or persecution. An asylum seeker is also fleeing war or persecution, but they apply for or declare asylum when they arrive in the country.
"Migrant" isn't a legally defined term in the U.S., but it typically refers to someone who comes for work. Most of the 43,000 migrants that have come to Denver during the past two years are fleeing persecution by the Venezuelan government, but they've been called migrants by city officials and the media, often because they're seeking work and not all of them apply for asylum.
Trump's executive order lumps migrants and refugees together, and cuts off refugee admission on the grounds that the U.S. can't handle being "inundated" any longer, according to the order.
"The United States lacks the ability to absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular 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," the executive order states. "Major urban centers such as New York City, Chicago and Denver have sought federal aid to manage the burden of new arrivals."
Refugees have been coming to Denver in much smaller numbers than the much-publicized migrants. From October 2022 to this past December, Colorado had resettled about 3,000 refugees in the state, mostly from Afghanistan, Burma and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Refugee resettlement can be a slow process. Even though migrants showed up in Denver seemingly overnight, refugees wait years, if not decades, to come to the U.S. because of the vetting process. "It takes decades for some families to be resettled because of the volume of checks and balances they go through in the application process," Smith says.
"The resettlement process in the U.S. is well organized and rigorous and involves many layers of vetting and security checks," Ouanzin Gbebri adds. "Some refugees go through this vetting program for twenty years. You have children being born and staying in a refugee camp for twenty years because of this vetting process."
Colorado is currently home to more than 75,000 refugees, according to the state Office of New Americans. In 2024, the ACC of Denver resettled nearly 1,400 refugees in the Denver area, a 30 percent increase from the year before and the most in a single year since the nonprofit began resettling in 2001, the group reports. The U.S. has resettled more than 3.1 million refugees since 1980.
About 80 percent of the refugees who have resettled in Colorado have come through Aurora, according to the Aurora Office of International and Immigrant Affairs. The city declined to comment on Trump's executive order, but "Aurora remains deeply committed to supporting its immigrant and refugee communities," city spokesperson Joe Rubino says.
While the suspension of refugee admissions is in place, Ouanzin Gbebri says resettlement agencies will focus on supporting refugees who are already in the U.S. while advocating for new arrivals.
