The U.S. bishops’ conference laid off 50 people on Friday, roughly one-third of staff members in its migration and refugee services office, after a halt to federal reimbursements for contracted refugee and migrant resettlement programmes.
The move comes amid Trump administration criticism of the refugee resettlement and migration aid work organised through the USCCB, and as the U.S. bishops’ global relief organisation faces layoffs related to slashed federal funding as well.
“The Executive Orders recently issued by the U.S president are causing confusion both within various agencies and with those who interact with them. This is true for the USCCB regarding cooperative agreements for both Refugee Resettlement Programs and our Children Services, which help care for unaccompanied children,” USCCB general secretary Fr. Michael Fuller wrote in a Feb. 7 memo to bishops, which was obtained by The Pillar Friday afternoon.
“In addition, to the best of my knowledge, since the new administration assumed office, no resettlement agency or other non-government agencies, including CRS, have received reimbursements for outstanding invoices related to the programs we administer. The last reimbursement payment the USCCB received from the Federal Government was on January 15th, which was reimbursement for services completed in November.”
“Currently, we are awaiting reimbursement for services completed in December, an amount close to $20 million. Invoices for services completed in January are now arriving, which means that we will be submitting millions more dollars of reimbursement requests,” Fuller added.
Because of delayed payments from the federal government, Fuller wrote, “we will be forced to issue layoff notices to 50 individuals, approximately one-third of the total MRS staff at this time.”
The refugee resettlement program run by the bishops’ conference is an umbrella federal contract, through which the USCCB subcontracts local Catholic Charities apostolates and other agencies to provide housing, job training, food assistance and other resources to participants in the federal Refugee Admissions Program, by which people who qualify for federal refugee status can be admitted to the United States.
Through the Children Services programme, the USCCB provides similar services through local agencies to minors entering the U.S. without adults, either claiming refugee status or entering the county illegally.
The bishops’ conference has been a federal contractor in resettlement programmes since 1980. That work came under fire last month, when Vice President JD Vance told a reporter that he believes the U.S. bishops are motivated to speak about immigration policy because of the grant funds they receive from the federal government — and Vance suggested those funds go to resettle “illegal immigrants.”
The bishops’ conference responded with a statement almost immediately, explaining its position, and pushing back on the idea that refugees it helps to resettle are not permitted to be in the United States.
The conflict has become the subject of fierce debate among Catholics.
But the cut off from federal reimbursements seems consistent with broadly applied Trump administration standstills on billions in federal dispersals for existing contracts, programmes, and subsidies. The payout freezes are the subject of both litigation and fierce political debate in Washington.
In light of that freeze, Fuller wrote that in addition to the USCCB’s own layoffs, officials will inform “our local Catholic Charities and other subcontracting agencies that there will be a delay in payments until further notice. This will be a burden on them and the people they serve and will result in staff layoffs.”
Even if/when the Federal Government reimburses the Conference, and after the 90-day review set by the Executive Orders, the landscape of both USCCB Refugee Services and Catholic Relief Services will have to dramatically change and the Conference will face some difficult questions that will need to be addressed by the Executive and Administrative Committees over the next several weeks regarding how we can best serve refugees,” he added.
As the USCCB faces layoffs, the National Catholic Reporter reported Thursday that the bishops’ global charitable agency, Catholic Relief Services, could slash its $1.5 billion budget by 50% this year, after the Trump administration effectively shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development, whose grants have constituted about half of the Catholic Relief Services budget.
“We anticipate that we will be a much smaller overall organization by the end of this fiscal year,” CRS CEO Sean Callahan wrote in a Feb. 3 staff email reported by the National Catholic Reporter.
It is not clear whether the Migration and Refugee Services staff at the USCCB could soon see additional layoffs.
Reached for comment Friday evening, USCCB spokesperson Chieko Noguchi told The Pillar that: “As a result of the continuing uncertainty regarding refugee resettlement and the overall future of those programs, staff of the USCCB’s Migration and Refugee Services Office were notified of a series of layoffs earlier today.”
“Please pray for these dedicated men and women who have given so much of themselves in service to their sisters and brothers in need. As this is a personnel matter, we will not be issuing a further statement out of respect for the impacted staff. In making these difficult decisions, we continue to work as best we can to lessen the impact on those families currently in the refugee resettlement program,” Noguchi added.
Shortly after the conference announced layoffs, several pages of the USCCB website related directly to the refugee resettlement program became intermittently unavailable to users.
Some USCCB migration-related pages were intermittently unavailable Friday evening.
A spokesperson for the USCCB told The Pillar that the conference itself had not taken down the pages, but that the USCCB site had been experiencing unusually heavy traffic Friday — which could likely explain sporadic unavailability
‘The Pillar’ breaks news that matters, with fair, thorough reporting on the life of the Church. Our paid subscribers make that work possible. Become a paid subscriber today
