logo
Virginia nonprofit ceases refugee resettlement program in wake of federal cuts

Virginia nonprofit ceases refugee resettlement program in wake of federal cuts

Yahoo08-03-2025

Commonwealth Catholic Charities, a faith-based nonprofit that works with immigrant and refugee populations in Hampton Roads, Richmond and Roanoke, laid off 26 people and ceased a refugee resettlement program in the wake of sweeping federal cuts and executive orders.
The organization has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on things such as direct support and rental assistance for refugees that will not be reimbursed by the federal government, and must now rely more heavily on donations to assist families who have already relocated to Virginia.
'The last month has been pretty nightmarish,' said Kristen Larcher, the nonprofit's director of the Refugee and Immigration program. 'We have received several executive orders, notices of suspension or termination of contracts that have pretty much changed our entire operation.'
The organization has resettled about 1,500 individuals in the Newport News area since 2018.
When refugees flee violence, persecution or war in their home countries to seek safety in the United States, the process can take years. They often wind up in a second country of asylum while they await a lengthy vetting process. The people Catholic Charities helps have been granted visas to travel to the U.S. and promised assistance to find housing and employment.
Until about a month ago, the refugee resettlement program at Catholic Charities worked like this: Before refugees arrived in Virginia, the organization would procure housing and supplies, making sure the fridge was stocked.
Then, staff would pick up refugees from the airport and begin an intensive acclimation process, which lasts 90 days. That meant meetings with a case manager. Health screenings. Pre-employment training and job interviews. Financial literacy training. English and cultural orientation classes. In the background, staff was coordinating transportation, helping people look for jobs and booking interpreters.
'I can imagine it's a whirlwind for a new refugee,' said Larcher. 'All these things we're trying to do to educate and just prepare them for life here.'
That intensive case management, called the reception and placement program, has been totally suspended as a result of federal policy changes.
The first came in January, when President Donald Trump issued an executive order suspending the United States Refugee Admissions Program. That effectively barred new refugees from entering the country, except at the discretion of the Secretary of State and Secretary of Homeland Security, who could agree to admit new people on a case-by-case basis. While the suspension is supposed to be reviewed every 90 days to determine whether it should resume, the practical effects meant Catholic Charities was no longer able to take in new refugees, ending the cyclical nature of the program.
Virginia Politics | VMI's first Black superintendent says ouster is based on politics
Virginia Politics | Republicans fight to restore party-run primaries, challenge new state law
Virginia Politics | Help could be on the way for Chincoteague water wells contaminated by PFAS
Virginia Politics | Norfolk's Commonwealth's Attorney condemns bill that would prevent federal funding for sanctuary cities
Virginia Politics | Rep. Jen Kiggans asks Department of Defense to limit veteran workforce cuts in new letter
Then the nonprofit, which is contracted through the U.S. Department of State and Office of Refugee Resettlement, received notice that federal funding for programs for new refugees was paused. That means no federal money was coming in to reimburse ongoing services with the resettled families already living in the state. As of Friday, the organization said it will not receive roughly $750,000 in reimbursement on expenses for direct client support, rental assistance and staffing costs.
'We're paying out a lot,' Larcher said. 'We're helping refugees with rent. We are buying them food and clothing, and we're not able to get that funding reimbursed.'
Catholic news outlets reported the State Department canceled its contract on Feb. 27 with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the national agency for Commonwealth Catholic Charities. That has meant the elimination of the reception and placement program.
Vice President JD Vance has been critical of the Catholic Church's involvement with immigration advocacy and refugee resettlement efforts, suggesting that bishops cared more about their bottom line than humanitarian efforts. Trump has said the refugee resettlement pause is necessary to ensure refugees are 'appropriately' assimilated and that taxpayer money is not wasted.
Since October, Commonwealth Catholic Charities has taken on 96 cases, a total of 378 people coming from countries such as Afghanistan, Eritrea, Syria and Ukraine. The nonprofit is still assisting 60 families while they look for work.
The federal announcements have meant a lot of scrambling, Larcher said, including emergency fundraising efforts to make sure existing refugees in the program are getting basics met, such as rent and utilities.
So far, the organization has raised $280,000 to pay for rent for all new arrivals through March. They hope to raise an additional $120,000 to cover rent through April and May. About $41,000 of the anticipated funding gap affects refugees in Hampton Roads.
After the initial 90 days, Catholic Charities provides other less intensive support for refugees for up to five years, after which they can apply for citizenship. That aid includes support services such as ESL classes, food pantries and immigration assistance. Under new federal policy, the 90-day case management program is terminated; the other support services are ongoing.
'Despite that funding and that program suspension and termination, we can't not continue to take care of refugees that have just come that were assigned to us,' Larcher said. 'These are individuals who are going to be part of our community, and we recognize in solidarity with them that we're all part of one human family.'
No one the organization currently works with will go homeless or hungry, Larcher said, but it's clear the nonprofit can't continue operate as is. In addition to laying off 26 staff members, a move that the organization said was necessary to continue to pay for direct assistance for new arrivals, refugees using the nonprofit's services are on a much more condensed timeline to become fully independent. The layoffs accounted for about 15% of the organization's total workforce, and more than half of the refugee resettlement team.
Though a Supreme Court decision last week upheld a requirement to have Trump resume payments for aid work already done, the administration signaled to faith-based charity groups that receive millions of dollars from the government every year that that time is over.
Kate Seltzer, 757-713-7881, kate.seltzer@virginiamedia.com

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Trading Day-London calling, stocks crawling higher
Trading Day-London calling, stocks crawling higher

Yahoo

time32 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Trading Day-London calling, stocks crawling higher

By Jamie McGeever ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - TRADING DAY Making sense of the forces driving global markets By Jamie McGeever, Markets Columnist I'm excited to announce that I'm now part of Reuters Open Interest (ROI), an essential new source for data-driven, expert commentary on market and economic trends. You can find ROI on the Reuters website, and you can follow us on LinkedIn and X. Trade tensions, policy uncertainty and shaky economic data continue to cloud the near-term outlook for world growth, but they remain on the back burner for now as investors kick off the week by pushing global stock markets higher. In my column today I look at why the dollar has depreciated significantly this year regardless of how U.S. stocks and bonds have performed. The main reason? Hedging. More on that below, but first, a roundup of the main market moves. If you have more time to read, here are a few articles I recommend to help you make sense of what happened in markets today. 1. Defying debt warnings, Republicans push forward on Trumptax agenda 2. 'Blue' euro bonds to rival Treasuries?: Mike Dolan 3. Japan to consider buying back some super-long governmentbonds, sources say 4. Wall Street, Main Street push for foreign tax rethink inU.S. budget bill 5. Auto companies 'in full panic' over rare-earthsbottleneck Today's Key Market Moves * World stocks set a new record high. The MSCI World indexrises 0.3% to 895.60 points. * Wall Street closes in the green despite a flurry of lateselling, and the S&P 500 nudges further above 6000 points. TheRussell 2000 small caps index rises most, up 0.6%. * The dollar index slips 0.25%. But the biggest declinerin global FX on Monday is the Colombian peso, down 0.7% afterthe assassination attempt on Senator Miguel Uribe, a potentialpresidential contender. * The U.S. yield curve bull steepens, snapping four sessionsof flattening, with the 2- and 3-year yields down 4 bps. Nextup, a $58 billion auction of 3-year notes on Tuesday. * Oil rises for a third day, with Brent crude climbing 1%above $67/bbl, its highest level since late April. London calling, stocks crawling higher It was a fairly quiet start to the week across global markets on Monday, with strong equity gains in Asia followed by a grind higher on Wall Street which lifted the MSCI World index to a fresh record high. The main areas of focus for investors were China's economic 'data dump' for May, then the high-level U.S.-China trade talks in London. The two are connected - the U.S. is a less important market for China than it used to be, underscored in May's trade figures from Beijing and reflected in the lack of concrete progress from the negotiations in London. China's total exports rose 4.8% in May from a year earlier but this masks a huge split between the U.S. and the rest of the world. Exports to the U.S. plunged 34.4% year-on-year in value terms, the sharpest drop since February 2020 just before the pandemic, while exports to the rest of the world rose 11.4%. Monthly data are volatile, of course, and May's figures were also distorted by tariffs. Still, U.S.-bound shipments worth $28.8 billion last month were just 9% of the total $316 billion. Economist Phil Suttle notes that is less than half the average share in the decade leading up to President Donald Trump's first trade war. The London talks are expected to continue on Tuesday. But as was the case following Trump's telephone call with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Thursday, there is little indication of a significant breakthrough, far less China bending to U.S. demands. "U.S. Treasury Secretaries who live in unbalanced economies might not want to throw barbs such as the 'most unbalanced in modern history' at China without first looking at some data," Suttle wrote on Monday. "The choice to fight an opponent should be conditioned on a clear-headed view of its strengths and weaknesses. The U.S. has done a marvelous job of (once again) deluding itself on this front," Suttle added. Still, divisions between the two countries and the threat to global supply chains are proving no barrier to rising stock markets. Japan's Nikkei and the MSCI emerging and Asia ex-Japan indexes rose around 1%, Hong Kong-listed tech stocks rose nearly 3%, and Wall Street closed in the green. Meanwhile, the dollar's trend this year of declining despite U.S. stocks and bonds rising was on full display on Monday. Wall Street closed slightly higher and Treasury yields fell as much as 5 basis points at the short end of the curve, yet the dollar slipped. Many analysts say one of the main reasons for this is non-U.S. investor hedging - more on that below. Dollar floored as investors seek that extra hedge All three major U.S. asset classes – stocks, bonds and the currency – have had a turbulent 2025 thus far, but only one has failed to weather the storm: the dollar. Hedging may be a major reason why. Wall Street's three main indices and the ICE BofA U.S. Treasury index are all slightly higher for the year to date, despite the post-'Liberation Day' volatility, while the dollar has steadily ground lower, losing around 10% of its value against a basket of major currencies and breaking long-standing correlations along the way. The dollar was perhaps primed for a fall. It's easy to forget, but only a few months ago the 'U.S. exceptionalism' narrative was alive and well, and the dollar scaling heights rarely seen in the past two decades. But that narrative has evaporated, as U.S. President Donald Trump's controversial economic policies and isolationist posture on the global stage have made investors reconsider their exposure to U.S. assets. But why is the dollar feeling the burn more than stocks or bonds? PENSION FUND-AMENTALS Non-U.S. investors often protect themselves against sharp currency fluctuations via the forward, futures or options markets. The difference now is that the risk premium being built into U.S. assets is pushing them – especially equity holders – to hedge their dollar exposure more than they have in the past. Foreign investors have long hedged their bond exposure, with dollar hedge ratios traditionally around 70% to 100%, according to Morgan Stanley, as currency moves can easily wipe out modest bond returns. But non-U.S. equity investors have been much more loath to pay for protection, with dollar hedge ratios averaging between 10% and 30%. This is partly because the dollar was traditionally seen as a 'natural' hedge against stock market exposure, as it would typically rise in 'risk off' periods when stocks fell. The dollar would also normally appreciate when the U.S. economy and markets were thriving – the so-called 'Dollar Smile' – giving an additional boost to U.S. equity returns in good times. A good barometer of global 'real money' investors' view on the dollar is how willing foreign pension and insurance funds are to hedge their dollar-denominated assets. Recent data on Danish funds' currency hedging is revealing. Danish funds' U.S. asset hedge ratio surged to around 75% from around 65% between February and April. According to Deutsche Bank analysts, that 10 percentage point rise is the largest two-month increase in over a decade. Anecdotal evidence suggests similar shifts are taking place across Scandinavia, the euro zone and Canada, regions where dollar exposure is also high. The $266 billion Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan reported a $6.9 billion foreign currency gain last year, mainly due to the stronger dollar. Unless the fund has increased its hedging ratio this year, it will be sitting on huge foreign currency losses. "Investors had embraced U.S. exceptionalism and were overweight U.S. assets. But now, investors are increasing their hedging," says Sophia Drossos, economist and strategist at the hedge fund Point72. And there is a lot of dollar exposure to hedge. At the end of March foreign investors held $33 trillion of U.S. securities, with $18.4 trillion in equities and $14.6 trillion in debt instruments. RIDING OUT THE STORM The dollar's malaise has upended its traditional relationships with stocks and bonds. Its generally negative correlation with stocks has reversed, as has the usually positive correlation with bonds. The divergence with Treasuries has gained more attention, with the dollar diving as yields have risen. But as Deutsche Bank's George Saravelos notes, the correlation breakdown with stocks is "very unusual". When Wall Street has fallen this year the dollar has fallen too, but at a much faster pace. And when Wall Street has risen the dollar has also bounced, but only slightly. This has led to the strongest positive correlation between the dollar and S&P 500 in years, though that's a bit deceptive, as the dollar is sharply down on the year while stocks are mildly stronger. Of course, what we could be seeing is simply a rebalancing. Saravelos estimates that global fixed income and equity managers' dollar exposure was at near record-high levels in the run-up to the recent trade war. This was a "cyclical" phenomenon over the last couple of years rather than a deep-rooted structural one based on fundamentals, meaning it could be reversed relatively quickly. But, regardless, the dollar's hedging headwind seems likely to persist. "Given the size of foreign holdings of both stocks and bonds, even a modest uptick in hedge ratios could prove a considerable FX flow," Morgan Stanley's FX strategy team wrote last month. "As long as uncertainty and volatility persist, we think that hedge ratios are likely to rise as investors ride out the storm." What could move markets tomorrow? * South Korea current account (April) * UK BRC retail sales (May) * UK employment (April) * Brazil inflation (May) * U.S. 3-year Treasury note auction Opinions expressed are those of the author. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias. (By Jamie McGeever; Editing by Nia Williams) Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data

Democratic FTC commissioner Bedoya says he will step down
Democratic FTC commissioner Bedoya says he will step down

Yahoo

time33 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Democratic FTC commissioner Bedoya says he will step down

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -One of the two Democratic commissioners at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission who has challenged his firing by President Donald Trump said on Monday he was stepping down. Alvaro Bedoya said he would step down to comply with ethics rules but will remain a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging his dismissal. "I love this work. But I'm not getting paid for it," Bedoya said. "But my number one job is to take care of my family." The FTC is currently led by three Republicans.

Dozens of anti-ICE rioters arrested in LA as Trump sends in National Guard to quell violence
Dozens of anti-ICE rioters arrested in LA as Trump sends in National Guard to quell violence

Yahoo

time33 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Dozens of anti-ICE rioters arrested in LA as Trump sends in National Guard to quell violence

Dozens of protesters have been arrested following a weekend of violence across Los Angeles as tensions hit a boiling point over immigration raids throughout the city. On Sunday, law enforcement officials from multiple agencies arrested 41 protesters as anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) demonstrations spiraled out of control. Of the nearly four-dozen arrests, 21 were made by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), 19 by California Highway Patrol and one by the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. Rioters Smash Windows At Lapd Headquarters As Anti-ice Agitators Clash With Authorities The charges include failure to disperse, assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer, looting and arson, an LAPD spokesperson told Fox News Digital. Of the most violent alleged offenses, one individual was arrested for attempted murder with a Molotov cocktail, Fox News Digital has learned. Read On The Fox News App On Saturday, the LAPD arrested 10 individuals for failing to disperse. The agency did not make any arrests Friday, according to officials. California Lt. Governor Says Los Angeles Riots Are 'Generated By Donald Trump' The LAPD declined Fox News Digital's request to identify the arrestees. The arrests come as the sanctuary city is bracing for the possibility of more violence as anti-ICE protesters clash with local, state and federal law enforcement. The protests kicked off on Friday after federal agents swept through the city's garment district in search of undocumented immigrants, sparking outrage throughout the community. California Republicans Slam Newsom, Bass For Letting La Burn With Riots Amid Trump Immigration Blitz In response to the unrest, President Donald Trump deployed 2,000 California National Guard troops to the area, with 300 troops arriving over the weekend. "We made a great decision in sending the National Guard to deal with the violent, instigated riots in California," Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday morning. "If we had not done so, Los Angeles would have been completely obliterated." Tensions escalated on the third day of protests as agitators moved throughout the city, setting self-driving cars on fire and blocking off major highways. Federal Officials Slam Democrats For 'Dangerous' Rhetoric As Ice Agents Face Violent Mobs In La, Nyc National Guard troops took to the streets Sunday morning to guard the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles. As the protesters approached the guard members, additional uniformed officers began shooting smoke-filled canisters into the street. The LAPD began firing off rounds of crowd-control munitions in an effort to disperse the protesters, who then advanced onto the 101 Freeway and proceeded to block traffic until state police cleared the roadway by late afternoon. Additionally, demonstrators set at least four self-driving electric vehicles on fire, resulting in large explosions being heard throughout the chaos along with intermittent flash bangs going off periodically. By Sunday night, local police had issued an unlawful assembly order, effectively shutting down the area throughout downtown Los Angeles. Ice Sweeps Through La Businesses As Local Democrats Cry Foul Over Trump Administration's Enforcement Actions "Demonstrators have marched to the LA Live area and are blocking all lanes of traffic on Figueroa and 11th St," the LAPD posted to X. "An UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLY has been declared for the Downtown Los Angeles area. You are to leave the area immediately." Trump's move to send in the U.S. military has drawn criticism from local and national politicians, with Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom renouncing the move while vowing to sue the administration. "This is about authoritarian tendencies," Newsom said in a statement. "This is about command and control. This is about power. This is about ego. This is a consistent pattern. This guy has abandoned the core principles of this great democracy. He's threatening to go after judges he disagrees with, cut off funding to institutions of higher learning, he's rewriting history and censoring historical facts." Patel Promises Fbi Coming For Anyone Assaulting Cops As Los Angeles Erupts Over Ice Raids Newsom arrived in Los Angeles on Sunday evening to meet with state officials and oversee the response to the anti-ICE demonstrations. ICE said in a Saturday post on X that the agency had arrested 118 illegal immigrants throughout Los Angeles, including five alleged gang members. "Why do Governor Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass care more about violent murderers and sex offenders than they do about protecting their own citizens?" Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for Homeland Security's public affairs, said in a statement. "These rioters in Los Angeles are fighting to keep rapists, murderers, and other violent criminals loose on Los Angeles streets. Instead of rioting, they should be thanking ICE officers every single day who wake up and make our communities safer." Representatives for Bass' administration did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment. Fox News Digital's Audrey Conklin contributed to this article source: Dozens of anti-ICE rioters arrested in LA as Trump sends in National Guard to quell violence

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store