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People lit candles at a vigil for Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services at the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme on February 5. Credit: Shahrzad Rasekh / CT Mirror

Connecticut refugee resettlement agencies fear the consequences of a new federal review of all refugees who were admitted during the Biden administration, a process that could result in some losing their approval to remain in the U.S.  

A memo issued this month by Joseph Edlow, the director of U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services, says that all refugees admitted between Jan. 20, 2021 and February 20, 2025 will have their applications for permanent residency in the United States paused. It asserts that during those years agencies “potentially prioritized expediency, quantity, and admissions over quality interviews and detailed screening and vetting.”

Maggie Mitchell Salem, the executive director of Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services, or IRIS, a New Haven-based resettlement agency, estimated that the reviews could affect about 2,500 people the organization settled between 2021 and 2025.

Mitchell Salem categorized the review as the latest addition to a long line of new difficulties that refugees will now face. In January, the Trump administration suspended the refugee resettlement program, a move that is being challenged in a lawsuit. 

The passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in July made refugees ineligible for SNAP benefits, and they will lose eligibility for Medicaid beginning in October 2026. 

“It’s basically telling refugees, ‘Get out,’” said Mitchell Salem. 

The memo casts doubt on the quality of refugee vetting conducted during the Biden years, but Mitchell Salem said the process was comprehensive. 

Refugees to the U.S. have to be reviewed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, a government organization or a nonprofit. They then have to go through a screening process and an interview to explain why they left their country and are afraid to go back. Once they have been determined to be refugees, they have to go through a second U.S. security clearance and can then be connected with a resettlement agency. The U.S. can also prioritize certain refugees based on geographic quotas or regional priorities.

“This process is extensive. It’s multiple agencies that someone has cleared through. There are multiple interviews,” said Mitchell Salem. 

The majority of refugees resettled in Connecticut in 2024 came from Syria. A large number also came from Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Venezuela. 

The Administration for Children and Families, in which the Office of Refugee Resettlement operates, did not return a request for comment. 

Rachel Kornfeld, CEO of Jewish Family Services of Greenwich, which has resettled about 2,000 refugees since 2021, said the worst part of this new policy was the uncertainty that it brought to a group of people who had already lived through war, trauma and persecution. 

“ However their path to the U.S. came to be, it was extremely challenging and tenuous,” she said. “And then to finally be in a place of safety, working toward continued independence and building a life, and then for that to be questioned just when you started to feel comfortable and feel safe is absolutely unimaginable.”  

Kornfeld noted that it was also very difficult for refugees who had gone through trauma to be forced to retell their stories over again to people whom they may not trust. 

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said he has not seen any evidence to suggest that State Department officials had applied a lower standard during the Biden years. 

“There is not a scintilla of fact to distinguish the process applied since 2021 from the way it functioned before that date under the previous Trump administration,” Blumenthal said. “These refugees are here legally. There’s no indication they are committing criminal offenses or otherwise deserving of this kind of retroactive review, so it seems eminently unnecessary and wasteful.”

Mitchell Salem said the reviews would also contribute to further delays for people who are trying to get their green cards. 

Laura Tillman is CT Mirror’s Human Services Reporter. She shares responsibility for covering housing, child protection, mental health and addiction, developmental disabilities, and other vulnerable populations. Laura began her career in journalism at the Brownsville Herald in 2007, covering the U.S.–Mexico border, and worked as a statehouse reporter for the Associated Press in Mississippi. She was most recently a producer of the national security podcast “In the Room with Peter Bergen” and is the author of two nonfiction books: The Long Shadow of Small Ghosts (2016) and The Migrant Chef: The Life and Times of Lalo Garcia (2023), which was just awarded the 2024 James Beard Award for literary writing. Her freelance work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. Laura holds a degree in International Studies from Vassar College and an MFA in nonfiction writing from Goucher College.

Emilia Otte is CT Mirror's Justice Reporter, where she covers the conditions in Connecticut prisons, the judicial system and migration. Prior to working for CT Mirror, she spent four years at CT Examiner, where she covered education, healthcare and children's issues both locally and statewide. She graduated with a BA in English from Bryn Mawr College and a MA in Global Journalism from New York University, where she specialized in Europe and the Mediterranean.