In a suit filed on Feb. 18 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) said that 6,700 admitted refugees were assigned to a program for refugee resettlement when the Trump administration ended its funding in January and that the move could jeopardize those efforts. The bishops group also said the pause in funding means that it is now on the hook for millions in costs incurred, violating federal laws.
“As a direct result of the suspension, USCCB has millions of dollars in pending, unpaid reimbursements for services already rendered to refugees and is accruing millions more each week—with no indication that any future reimbursements will be paid or that the program will ever resume,” the lawsuit stated, adding it “has already been forced to initiate layoffs for fifty employees.”
Named in the lawsuit were both Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
If the funding is still suspended without court intervention, the USCCB “faces irreparable damage to its longstanding refugee resettlement programs and its reputation and relationship with its subrecipients and the refugee populations it serves,” its lawsuit said.
The conference is one of 10 national agencies, most of them religion-based, that handle refugees and that have been sent scrambling since receiving a Jan. 24 State Department letter informing them of an immediate suspension of funding pending a review of foreign aid programs.
The lawsuit further argued that the resettlement program isn’t foreign aid and is instead a domestic program to help newly arrived refugees meet initial needs such as housing and job placement.
“USCCB spends more on refugee resettlement each year than it receives in funding from the federal government, but it cannot sustain its programs without the millions in federal funding that provide the foundation of this private-public partnership,” its lawsuit stipulated.
Although the Trump administration has not responded to the lawsuit in court, Vice President JD Vance was critical of the Catholic bishops group in a Fox News interview earlier in February, saying it and related groups were involved in facilitating illegal immigration into the United States.
“You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country,” Vance, a Catholic, told Fox News. “Then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.”
Vance, who called himself a devout Catholic in the interview, said he was disappointed in bishops because they had “not been a good partner in common sense immigration enforcement” and took in $100 million “to help resettle illegal immigrants.”
The Epoch Times contacted the Department of State for comment.
