Stand with us during this pivotal moment by donating to our Emergency Response Fund
Your dollars will directly support refugees who have arrived in this region in the past few weeks.
On January 20th, President Trump signed an Executive Order pausing refugee resettlement. On Friday, January 24th, an unprecedented additional restriction was declared, a ‘stop work order’ for all Reception and Placement services. This means we must cease all resettlement activities for newly arrived families. We are prohibited from using the federal dollars that Congress has already allocated for the families who have arrived. We are prohibited from enrolling their children in school, scheduling a doctor’s visit for them, driving to visit them to provide services, or helping them find a place to stay with funds that were already set aside for them. We have been asked to abandon them.
JFS has launched an Emergency Response Fund to meet the challenges ahead and uphold the values of welcoming and human dignity. With your financial support, we can respond to recent and emerging developments in federal funding and policies. Resettlement is a local articulation of a global responsibility to welcome the stranger, and the recognition that “neighbor” is not a geographic term but a moral concept. We ask you to join us at this moment as we strive to safely and effectively welcome 136 people who we resettled in the last several weeks.
