R.I.’s largest immigration nonprofit faces layoffs amid Trump funding freeze

Dorcas International, which serves thousands of refugees and immigrants in Rhode Island each year, relies on federal funding for about half its annual budget.

By Steph Machado Globe Staff,Updated March 17, 2025, 6:00 a.m.

Kathy Cloutier, the executive director of Dorcas International Institute, said the nonprofit could lose up to a third of its staff if federal funding goes away.Michael Frank/Rhode Island 

PROVIDENCE — On Jan. 24, staff members from Dorcas International Institute picked up a family of refugees from Afghanistan from T.F. Green International Airport, a routine task for the state’s largest refugee resettlement agency.

It was the same day President Trump announced a stop work order for groups that help refugees resettle in the United States. He had already signed an executive order on Inauguration Day suspending refugees from coming to the US, citing “significant influxes of migrants” to communities. The program is halted “until such time as the further entry into the United States of refugees aligns with the interests of the United States.”

For Dorcas, it meant an abrupt stop to roughly $1 million in annual funds used to help refugees in their first 90 days in the country, setting them up with housing, cultural orientation, English classes, school enrollment and other assistance. While no more refugees arrived after the stop work order, there were already 65 recent arrivals to Rhode Island who were within their first 90 days in the US, including the family who arrived the day of the order. The refugees came from Central America, Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, and other countries.

“So there’s no rent money, there’s no food money, there’s no money for them to support them in those first three months,” said Kathy Cloutier, the executive director of Dorcas International Institute, in an interview with the Boston Globe and Rhode Island PBS. 
 
“So that was what was disconcerting,” she said. “It was one thing not to have new refugees coming in. It was another thing to say, wait a minute. We’ve promised these folks this three months worth of assistance, and you’ve just stopped it without any warning and without any reason, frankly.”

The program that was halted, Reception and Placement, is run out of the State Department. Unlike asylum-seekers, who arrive on their own, refugees in the program are selected ahead of time and brought to the US with a promise of federal assistance to settle into a community.

The State Department declined to comment to the Globe about when the program might restart, referring all comment to the White House. The White House did not respond.

But in a court filing on Friday in one of the federal lawsuits over the refugee program’s abrupt halting, the Trump administration indicated it would not be easy to restart refugee resettlement, since contracts with nonprofits have been terminated. It would take “at least three months” just to solicit bidders for new contracts, the Trump administration’s lawyers wrote in the documents.

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For Dorcas, which serves roughly 6,000 immigrants a year, the program suspension has already resulted in job cuts. The nonprofit’s 105 employees have been cut down to 92, Cloutier said, through both voluntary resignations and layoffs since the refugee program stopped.

And there is still other funding that is paused. Funds from the federal Preferred Communities program, from which Dorcas receives $1.5 million a year, remain frozen, Cloutier said. That pot of money is used to help particularly vulnerable refugees who are outside the 90-day window but still need help getting employment or becoming self-sustaining residents of their new community.

“We haven’t been paid for that work since December,” Cloutier said. “And there’s no explanation that we’ve received in terms of why we haven’t been paid. It’s putting a significant strain on us financially.”

The federal money flows to Dorcas through a national nonprofit, the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, which also said they haven’t received an explanation for the ongoing pause. The money should have started flowing again following multiple injunctions granted by federal judges in lawsuits against the federal funding freeze, according to Kelci Sleeper, a spokesperson for the national nonprofit.

“Unfortunately, we have no additional insight,” Sleeper said. “The administration is not paying agencies for work completed.”
 
Cloutier said if all of Dorcas’s federal funding were cut — roughly half of its $11.5 million budget — she would have to reduce the staff to 62 employees. It would have a profound effect on the immigrants they serve, she said.

“This is just a way of putting us out of business,” Cloutier said. “Because if you make us wait long enough, we’re not going to be able to pay our bills.”

Dorcas also gets revenue from philanthropic donations, and charges some clients a low fee for legal services. Cloutier said the agency was ultimately able to raise private funds for the 65 refugees affected by the initial stop work order.

Cloutier said the agency is not yet seeing mass deportations in Rhode Island, as promised by Trump during the campaign, nor have there been reports in the state of ICE agents entering schools, hospitals, or churches. There have been ICE agents in the state executing individual deportation orders, as there were during the Biden administration.

A Providence police spokesperson said ICE has notified city officials twice so far this year of their “intent to come to the city,” but did not provide specifics and did not ask police for any assistance.

Cloutier said many clients are coming in seeking advice about their immigration status, even if they have a green card.

“We are seeing a lot of fear,” Cloutier said. “The rules are changing, and nobody knows what the rules are anymore.”

If funding to Dorcas is not fully restored, Cloutier said, it will become more difficult for immigrants to be successful learning English, getting jobs, and becoming productive members of society. But she said Dorcas, which was founded in 1921, will adapt to whatever happens.