On New Year’s Eve, Grace Paul and four of her children, refugees from South Sudan, had just arrived in Kansas City.

At midnight, when gunfire erupted outside, they didn’t know that people in the United States sometimes shoot bullets into the sky to celebrate. So they hit the floor, as memories of the war that had driven them from their home 10 years earlier came rushing back.

“We know that sound,” said Simon Yokwe, Paul’s 27-year-old son, “and we know it’s not good. It’s never good.”

But they have learned — just as they’ve learned how to navigate the bus system and where to obtain a government ID. 

They have also learned to worry that strangers who stare at them in public may be hostile to immigrants. And they’ve learned that the newly elected government in the country that promised them a safe home is wasting no time throwing away the welcome mat.

‘Nobody gets paid’

Since Donald Trump returned to the White House, he has put a stop to refugees entering the United States and ordered refugee resettlement agencies to stop their work helping the refugees who recently arrived. Funding to those agencies has also stopped.

Refugee resettlement agencies have contracts with the U.S. government to assist refugees with things like housing and finding work. Like Paul and her children, hundreds of new refugees in the Kansas City area are relying on that help as they get their footing.

But resettlement agencies, including four in the Kansas City area, say they are struggling to continue their work. They have not been reimbursed for expenses incurred since before Trump took office. And two of the agencies —  Jewish Vocational Service of Kansas City (JVS) and Della Lamb Community Services  — said the federal government owes them close to $1 million each.

JVS has an annual budget of about $10.5 million, while Della Lamb’s is about $9.6 million.

“Nobody’s getting paid,” said Hilary Cohen Singer, executive director of JVS. “Nobody knows why. Nobody knows if it’s permanent.”

Earlier this month, JVS laid off 12 employees and eliminated 10 vacant positions in response to the federal funding freeze. Della Lamb had to lay off 19 staff members for the same reason. And Mission Adelante, a smaller resettlement agency in Kansas City, Kansas, was forced to lay off seven employees. The area’s fourth resettlement agency, Catholic Charities of Northeast Kansas, could not be reached for comment.

For now, the organizations said they are relying on the community to make up for some of the lost federal funds. But they acknowledge that charitable gifts will have a hard time covering the gap.

Right now, Singer said, it’s a real question whether her agency will have the money it needs to cover refugees’ rent in April. She doesn’t know what services may have to fall by the wayside, but she said that JVS is determined to do everything it can to keep promises made when refugees were invited to settle in the United States.

“We are of the mindset that it is incumbent upon us to remain available and supportive of the communities who came to this country with the expectation that someone would be there as a guide,” Singer said.

What is a refugee?

In 2022, under the Biden administration, the United States doubled the number of refugees the country could admit to 125,000, an increase from 62,500 in 2021. The cap remained the same in 2023 and 2024, although actual refugee admissions were lower.

Regardless, even the increased cap represents less than 0.4% of the  31.6 million refugees worldwide who have been forced to leave their homes because of war, political upheaval or other disruptions.

The United States defines refugees as people who are facing humanitarian concerns at home and can show that they have been persecuted because of their race, religion, nationality, political opinions or membership in a particular social group.

People must apply for refugee status from outside the United States. And the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program only grants a person that status after extensive interviews and screenings. Once they’ve been accepted, many refugees wait years before traveling to the United States.

Paul and her children, now ranging from 15 to 27 years old, fled South Sudan when civil war erupted in 2013. They left their home on foot with nothing, knowing that if they didn’t leave immediately they would likely die. Eventually, the family found its way to Kakuma, a refugee camp in Kenya, where they spent the last decade.

“The only thing that mattered during that time was being alive,” said Yokwe, who was 16 when his family was forced to flee South Sudan. “The rest of the things you can find, but life is the most precious thing.”

Yokwe said his family learned that their refugee status had been approved in 2018, but Trump’s first term as president, when immigration was severely limited, and then a worldwide pandemic, led to more years of waiting. Finally, in December 2024, the family got word that they’d be flying to Kansas City in two weeks.

“We felt like we’ve seen God’s hand,” Yokwe said, “because we have been waiting for that for the longest time possible.”

But their joy is dampened by what they’re learning about the refugee camp they left behind in Kenya. Another Trump executive order, the attempt to shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development, has left friends and family who are still there with dwindling food supplies.

“I don’t know what to say,” Yokwe said, his voice trailing off. “But it’s sad.”

A meal waiting

When Yokwe, his three younger siblings and his mom arrived at Kansas City International Airport on Dec. 30, a group of volunteers who work with JVS was there to greet them.

JVS had rented a house for them on the east side of Kansas City, and the volunteers had made sure it was furnished and decorated. They stocked the kitchen with groceries and had a meal waiting for the family when they got there.

The government traditionally provides housing and other support for the first 90 days refugees are in the United States. Some additional limited support may be offered for the first year or so.

Resettlement agencies also help refugees with practical things, like enrolling their children in school and completing paperwork necessary to apply for a job. They teach classes to help refugees understand what is often a very different culture. And volunteers spend time showing new arrivals the city. There are also other services like English classes and help with immigration applications.

“It takes a little while to get on your feet,” said Jarrett Meek, founder, pastor and executive director of Mission Adelante. “But they do. They end up thriving and contributing.”

A study that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released last year found that over a 15-year period refugees and people who had been granted asylum contributed $123.8 billion more to the economy than they have cost the government.

“A lot of times we focus on just the need for the U.S. to be a refuge for people in need,” Meek said. “And that’s very true. But there’s also great benefit that we receive from receiving refugees. They are contributing to our society within a very short time.”

Small heaven on earth

Before Paul’s 20-year-old daughter Lydia Yokwe came to the United States, her friends told her it would be a “small heaven on earth.”

Lydia has hope for it. She has already passed an English test and is ready to enroll in classes at a community college. (Her dream is to one day go to medical school and become a neurologist.) But so far the United States has fallen short of her friends’ description.

“Right now, I tell my friends, ‘OK, the states are not what you think,’” she said.

Although she often reminds herself how important it is to brush off negative feelings or worries, Yokwe said she can’t help but notice the stares sometimes when she is out around Kansas City.

“It’s like they’ve never seen Black people before,” she said.

And the political climate isn’t helping. That has made her mother afraid and often reluctant to leave the house, Yokwe said.

Paul speaks Arabic, Swahili and Bari, a language spoken in South Sudan, but she is just learning English. As her children translated, Paul said she has felt even less safe leaving the house since Inauguration Day, as rhetoric about immigrants seems to have become even more heated and negative.

Dina Nzirimo, who came to Kansas City as a refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo 16 years ago and now works as a volunteer helping settle new refugees, said she remembers the same unease when she arrived. The reality of the United States was no match for the hype, she said.

“When we’re back in Africa, we think, ‘Once we make it to America, oh my goodness, what other problem can we have?’” said Nzirimo, a nurse who has four kids. “And then you get to America, and you’re like, ‘OK. That’s it?’”

But the promise, she said, comes back once new arrivals start to understand the systems and find a place for themselves. As for the uncomfortable stares, Nzirimo said, those don’t go away. But she’s learned to deal with them.

“You just have to teach yourself that it’s not about me,” she said. “It’s about them.”

Back to waiting

Between October and January, JVS resettled 350 refugees from all over the world. That’s more than half of the total number the agency resettled during all of fiscal year 2024, which ended in September. 

Della Lamb resettled 80 refugees in December, the largest number of resettlements it had ever done in one month. The group said 47 families and 137 individuals were receiving services that fell under Trump’s order ending resettlement service. Over the course of the year, Della Lamb helped almost 2,000 people, including new arrivals and refugees who had been in the country longer.

And Mission Adelante brought in 171 people last year, its first year as a resettlement agency.

Those numbers would have been higher, but the day Trump took office he immediately canceled refugee admissions. All of the Kansas City resettlement organizations had to reach out to people who already had airplane tickets to tell them that their invitations had been rescinded.

“We had refugees on their way here,” Meek said. 

Some were family members of refugees already in the United States. 

“When admissions were abruptly cut off,” Meek said, “they started coming to the office, asking when their family would be able to come. Those families are currently divided, and there’s no resolution in sight for that.”

Singer said one of the refugees JVS was expecting had been separated from her husband when the United States pulled out of Afghanistan in 2021. During the chaotic retreat, he made it to the airport and came to the United States, but she did not. They’ve been waiting to be reunited ever since. They thought the day had finally come, Singer said.

“We got the notice that she had cleared her interview and was going to be ready to be scheduled for travel the week of the inauguration,” Singer said. 

That’s when everything abruptly stopped. Like many other families separated on different sides of the world, that Afghan couple must go back to waiting.

“And now,” Singer said. “Who knows? Who knows?”