Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services (IRIS) has decided not to work with the federal government to help resettle refugees this year, citing concerns about the Trump administration’s severe restriction of the American refugee system to prioritize white South Africans.
In prior years, the State Department has contracted with IRIS (through its national affiliate, Church World Service) to assist refugees coming to the United States over the course of the first 90 days of their move.
Last year, starting on Oct. 1, IRIS was initially under contract to resettle 800 families. On Jan. 27, however, the Trump administration issued a “stop work order” halting the program after only 200 families had arrived.
Now, after an overhaul to U.S. refugee policy, IRIS has decided not to take on such a contract this year — and to focus instead on assisting refugees and immigrants who have already settled in Connecticut, or who have found private funding to arrive in the country on Special Immigrant Visas.
According to Executive Director Maggie Mitchell Salem, the federal 90-day resettlement assistance program has been moved from the State Department to the federal Health and Human Services department. In September, the department issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) for agencies to help incoming refugees during their first 90 days.
Salem said that IRIS’ board met in mid-September and voted not to participate in the RFP.
She said that the decision was made after consultations with donors, volunteers, and community members.
The primary reason for the decision, she said, was President Donald Trump’s February executive order indicating an intent to allocating resettlement slots to white Afrikaners from South Africa ahead of over 130,000 already-approved refugees from other countries who have waited for years to enter the United States.
The decision was “not about political ideology,” but a “very pragmatic, operational, tied-to-our-mission decision on who we are here to serve and how we do that,” said Mitchell Salem. “We’re not a relocation company. We resettle the world’s most vulnerable people.”
Trump has recently championed the narrative that white Afrikaners (descendants of Dutch and French colonists in South Africa) are currently being persecuted by their government. He has claimed that vigilante attacks on South African farms amount to a “genocide” against white people; the South African government has countered that violence in the country does not statistically target white people. Trump’s executive order also lambasted post-apartheid reforms, including affirmative action laws and new legislation enabling uncompensated expropriation of land in certain circumstances.
Indeed, on Friday, the New York Times reported that Trump plans to overhaul the United States’ refugee program to focus largely on white Afrikaners. The Times reported that Trump also intends to cap the number of refugees accepted by the United States next year to 7,500 — a dramatic decrease from the most recent cap set by the Biden administration of 125,000. A majority of those slots, according to the Times, are slated to be reserved for Afrikaners.
According to an Oct. 4 press release from Church World Service, “No president other than Trump, regardless of party, has ever set a refugee admissions goal below 60,000. “
IRIS, which typically supports expanded immigration opportunities, is not taking the stance that those Afrikaners should not be accepted into the United States, noted Mitchell Salem. “We don’t judge people,” she said.
The reason that IRIS is not participating in resettlement this year is that “the word ‘refugee’ has meaning. It has an agreed upon definition,” Mitchell Salem said.
“The rule of law exists in South Africa. People have the opportunity to seek redress from their government,” while IRIS is focusing on serving people who have no other recourse in their countries of origin.
While Mitchell Salem said that IRIS community members and partners “overwhelmingly” advocated for the organization to not participate in resettlement this year, the decision was not an easy one.
It’s still uncertain how many refugees who have already met U.S. screening requirements could be allowed into the United States this year. “What does it mean to be saying no, when we could be saying no to populations that need safety?” asked Mitchell Salem.
Additionally, she said, “there’s risk of retaliation. We have other federal funding we are continuing to implement for those populations that are already here and their needs are significant.”
For now, IRIS is refocusing on assisting refugees who are already in New Haven with ongoing needs, including healthcare access, language learning, literacy, housing, and food security.
The organization has also been assisting Afghan individuals and families who worked with the U.S. Army and now face risk of retribution from the Taliban. Many of those individuals have already obtained Special Immigrant Visas allowing them to come to the U.S. and simply need the money to afford traveling here in the absence of federal funding.
Some have been able to secure private funding, such as travel loans, according to Mitchell Salem. On average, IRIS has helped one Afghan family settle in the U.S. each month since February, drawing from private donations as well as some state funding to keep resettlement efforts alive.
This story was first published Oct. 8, 2025 by New Haven Independent.