On Monday a group of national organizations that help refugees resettle in the United States sued the Trump administration in Seattle, trying to block its freeze on funding that Congress already has approved. A Michiana nonprofit is watching nervously.
The United Religious Community of St. Joseph County, or URC, is one of about 50 nonprofits across 24 states that are affiliated with Church World Service, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit,.
Since joining Church World Service in 2021, the URC has helped more than 300 refugees, mostly from Afghanistan and Ukraine, to settle in St. Joseph and Elkhart counties. The URC has committed to helping 100 more refugees settle in the fiscal year that started Oct. 1.
URC Executive Director John Pinter says that flow of refugees has now come to a dead stop. And the local nonprofit doesn’t know if it will be reimbursed for help it’s already giving refugees with things like rent, food and finding jobs.
"We are planning to serve 100 people through the course of a year," Pinter said. "We're good at that and we have a great community that can support people doing that. That's a very reasonable number and our hope is that kind of reasonableness, and the success that we've had, can get restored. That's our hope."
Pinter says he’s getting updates on the situation from Church World Service, including a call Thursday that offered little news.
