The Trump administration’s funding cuts and contract cancellations to refugee resettlement caused Catholic Charities to layoff 17 staff members.
An executive order signed February 26 terminated agreements with the agencies contracted by the U.S. Refugee Admission Program.
Catholic Charities was among them.
On Monday, the Catholic Charities of Fort Wayne-South Bend announced that 20 percent of its workforce was cut.
These contracts provided for financial and other services to refugees from the first 90 days to 240 days upon their arrival in the U.S.
"We have, between our three offices, we have about 80 employees, and so this reduction is about 20% of our workforce. It's not just affecting the refugee department, but also administrative support that that helps feed into the refugee department," said Nicole Kurut, the marketing manager for Catholic Charities.
She says that there are about 1,000 refugees on the agency’s rolls.
Through affiliate agencies such as Catholic Charities, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops resettles approximately 18 percent of the refugees that arrive in the U.S. annually.
"We are a social service agency with a mission to serve everyone in need, as Christ has called us to do. And for the past 103 years, we've really dedicated ourselves to providing humanitarian aid. And whenever a program is discontinued, we can see how deeply that affects the people that we serve, and we're really saddened by that impact," Kurut said.
"We do have staff that will continue to serve the roughly 1000 people that are refugees and are on our client roster, so we do have people standing by to continue some of the assistance after they are resettled. And I also want the public to know that this decision will not affect the many other programs that we have at Catholic charities such as supporting the homeless, assisting pregnant mothers, as well as providing mental health services, and we remain hopeful that in the future, we'll get to continue our work in resettlement."
