Philly’s biggest refugee-resettlement agency fights for its future as federal funds are slashed under Trump

The largest refugee-resettlement agency in Philadelphia has lost millions of dollars in funding and slashed dozens of jobs as the Trump administration halts the program that brings some of the world’s most desperate people to new lives in the United States.

There’s no indication when the cuts might end at Nationalities Service Center, as the 103-year-old institution confronts what its director calls “seismic” change and uncertainty.

Come May, its budget is expected to be down by half, from $13.4 million to between $6 million and $8 million. The staff has shrunk by about a third, from 125 in December to 81 now.

The agency closed its satellite office in Northeast Philadelphia, originally undertaken as an effort to meet immigrants where they live, in an area that has become home to newcomers from China, Brazil, Portugal, Russia, Afghanistan, and the Dominican Republic.

NSC has helped lead virtually every major area resettlement effort, supporting displaced peoples after World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War through recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Ukraine. Now it faces a different and smaller future than the one it envisioned only last year.

“The international framework for resettlement has been, or will certainly soon be, eviscerated,” said Margaret O’Sullivan, the organization’s executive director. “Things are challenging. Extraordinarily so.”

The federal government’s refugee resettlement program is how the United States enables people forced from their homelands to find hope, safety, and support in America. The U.S. has traditionally been the world leader in resettlement — and agencies like NSC, which is 80% federally funded, are the frontline instruments of that.

The refugee system is a form of legal immigration, and new arrivals have a specific, government-authorized status that includes a clear path to citizenship. Typically, people come here carrying only the clothes on their backs and their personal trauma.

Over time, economically, they contribute billions of dollars more than they cost, studies show.

In an interview at NSC’s Arch Street offices, O’Sullivan and deputy director Steven Larin offered a snapshot of the agency’s standing — its troubles large and local, but typical of what is happening to resettlement agencies and their immigrant clients across the country.

Every day when she walks through the fourth-floor lobby, O’Sullivan said, she sees concern on the faces of immigrant families, their worry over the future of the agency and a volatile national political climate.

“When I’m with them, you can feel it, it’s palpable,” O’Sullivan said. “I didn’t think we’d ever be here, as a city, as a country.”

With dollars limited, the agency is concentrating on continuing to run key services that include teaching English, providing legal services, and promoting wellness and access to health care.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has already arrested, detained, and deported some immigrants who had official permission to live here, including a group of Bhutanese refugees in central Pennsylvania. Refugees can lose their legal status under certain circumstances, such as committing crimes or misrepresenting themselves.

During the roughly 16 months before Trump took office, NSC welcomed to the area 723 refugees from Afghanistan, Syria, Myanmar, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The president’s Jan. 27 order stopped new admissions, and a second directive cut off funding for agencies to support those already here.

One Afghan family managed to get itself to Philadelphia, showing up at NSC in March, permitted to enter the country on the Special Immigrant Visas granted to war allies. Despite its internal challenges, the agency did everything it could to welcome and support the family.

“Seeing my colleagues rise up like they have and recognizing the moment we’re in, and doing everything possible to mitigate the impact, has been something I’m extraordinarily proud of,” O’Sullivan said. “We had to prioritize both the staff and the clients concurrently, immediately, because we couldn’t let these people that arrived, you know, wind up in a shelter.”

The U.S. resettled 100,034 refugees in fiscal 2024, the largest number in 30 years, as President Joe Biden rebuilt the shrunken system he inherited from the first Trump presidency. Presidents hold enormous power over refugee admissions, as their annual determination sets the numerical ceiling.

Trump cut admissions to historic lows during his first term. Now he has cited security and terrorism concerns around refugees, asserting that the U.S. lacks the ability to absorb these newcomers in a way “that does not compromise the availability of resources for Americans, that protects their safety and security, and that ensures the appropriate assimilation.”

NSC had tripled in size under Biden, as his administration pushed resettlement offices to expand and take on more work.

Three years ago, Nationalities Service Center had rarely been busier, having pledged to resettle 500 Afghan allies and their families, about a third of the statewide total. It was a leader in the national effort to welcome those who served the American war effort in Afghanistan, as Philadelphia International Airport became the country’s main arrival hub. Thousands of Afghans were transferred from there to temporary quarters at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in South Jersey.

NSC turned part of the Marriott Residence Inn in Center City into a kind of American Orientation University, with English classes in the morning and job preparation in the afternoon, followed by two sessions of information on housing, one in Dari, the other in Pashto.

Refugees are, by definition, people who have been forced to flee their homelands and seek safety in another country due to war, violence, or persecution. Some spend decades in refugee camps and others lack even that accommodation, living in tents.

If approved for resettlement in the United States, they undergo intense vetting and security checks that can take several years.

Trump’s decision to halt the program stranded people in volatile countries amid thousands of canceled plane flights, and left others homeless and destitute as they readied for departures that never came. Family members in this country say they are devastated for parents and siblings who counted on the now-broken promise of being brought to the United States.

Worldwide need has rarely been greater, with more than 120 million people, roughly the population of Japan, having been forcibly displaced, according to the United Nations. That includes 43 million refugees.

One of the few certainties in refugee resettlement now is that admissions, if resumed under Trump, will be light.

“Those numbers will be extremely low,” NSC’s Larin said, “and the services that were being provided to those refugees once they entered will also have been diminished, and most likely not coming back at the same level.”

NSC hopes that state and local funding can make up for some losses. It has launched a “Back to Our Roots” campaign to try to raise $2.5 million, and leading agency donors have pledged to match the first $700,000.

The next important marker for NSC comes on Oct. 1, the start of the federal fiscal year. That may give guidance for the future.

“When a new administration comes in, there are always changes of views and what direction they’d like to take,” O’Sullivan said. “But this particular change was incredibly seismic and, frankly, astonishing in how precisely aimed it was at reducing our sector.”