By Anna Heqi­mi
UConn Jour­nal­ism

When Doina Lavoie-Gonci and oth­er vol­un­teers with the Old Lyme Refugee Reset­tle­ment Com­mit­tee learned about the plight of a preg­nant moth­er of three from Hon­duras whose hus­band had been deport­ed, they took action, work­ing to iden­ti­fy orga­ni­za­tions and resources that could help. 

The group, which was pre­vi­ous­ly ded­i­cat­ed to help­ing new refugees set­tle in the area, is among the many vol­un­teer orga­ni­za­tions seek­ing new ways to aid immi­grant and refugee fam­i­lies already in Con­necti­cut.  

“We are all ‘vis­i­tors’ here on this plan­et and in our life­times have choic­es on how we choose to walk down our indi­vid­ual path,” Lavoie-Gonci said. “For me, it is sim­ply the right thing to do.” 

In the year since Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump returned to the White House and immi­gra­tion enforce­ment has sig­nif­i­cant­ly ramped up, the refugee reset­tle­ment sys­tem has dras­ti­cal­ly changed. After ini­tial­ly sus­pend­ing the refugee reset­tle­ment pro­gram, Trump sig­nif­i­cant­ly lim­it­ed the num­ber of incom­ing refugees.  

With far few­er refugee fam­i­lies enter­ing the coun­try, local non­prof­its and church groups have had to adapt to uphold their mis­sions. 

Under Pres­i­dent Joseph Biden, the refugee lim­it for fis­cal year 2025 was set at 125,000, with spots allo­cat­ed to those com­ing from Africa, East Asia and Latin Amer­i­ca. Accord­ing to the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty, most refugees came from Venezuela, Afghanistan and Syr­ia in fis­cal year 2024. 

In late Sep­tem­ber 2025, Trump announced his admin­is­tra­tion would lim­it the num­ber of refugees to just 7,500 refugees for fis­cal year 2026, pri­mar­i­ly accept­ing Afrikan­ers from South Africa, accord­ing to the Office of Home­land Secu­ri­ty. Trump also banned Afghans from enter­ing the U.S., and Venezue­lans are par­tial­ly banned, accord­ing to a pres­i­den­tial procla­ma­tion. 

Trump said that Afrikan­ers are fac­ing per­se­cu­tion. “Gen­er­al­ly they’re white farm­ers and they’re flee­ing South Africa, and it’s a very sad thing to see,” he said in remarks at the White House. 

Mag­gie Mitchell Salem, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Con­necti­cut-based Inte­grat­ed Refugee & Immi­grant Ser­vices, said the “his­tor­i­cal­ly low” refugee admis­sions num­ber sets an “unfor­tu­nate record.” The 2026 fis­cal year lim­it is the low­est num­ber of max­i­mum refugees accept­ed in the coun­try since the pro­gram start­ed in 1980 – even low­er than dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, accord­ing to the Migra­tion Pol­i­cy Insti­tute. 

Mitchell Salem said the white Afrikan­ers that the admin­is­tra­tion is pri­or­i­tiz­ing are those who are “ide­o­log­i­cal­ly aligned with the admin­is­tra­tion,” and not actu­al refugees. Her orga­ni­za­tion made the deci­sion to no longer par­tic­i­pate in the refugee admis­sion pro­gram and to not to assist any new refugees besides Afghan allies.

“The pop­u­la­tions being wel­comed are not refugees, and we know what that word means, and we know who we serve,” Mitchell Salem said.  

The U.S. Depart­ment of State used to pro­vide the group, known as IRIS, with fund­ing to sup­port refugee set­tle­ment for the first 90 days that a refugee was in the U.S. The funds were used to pro­vide refugees with apart­ments, basic sup­plies and gro­ceries. It also helped cov­er staff that assist refugees to get chil­dren into school, find jobs, and obtain legal ser­vices. 

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion cut refugee sup­port fund­ing, caus­ing the non­prof­it to lose $4 mil­lion in rev­enue in ear­ly 2025, accord­ing to Mitchell Salem. IRIS cut 40% of its staff and closed offices in Hart­ford and New Haven.

“I think being an immi­grant is at the core of who we are as Amer­i­cans,” Mitchell Salem said. “The work we do at IRIS is fun­da­men­tal­ly among the most Amer­i­can jobs you can have because it’s bring­ing in and help­ing adjust the next gen­er­a­tion, and I think that’s beau­ti­ful.” 

Daad Ser­w­eri, who came to the U.S. in 2017 from Afghanistan and works as IRIS’ asso­ciate direc­tor of spon­sor­ship, said the orga­ni­za­tion is rely­ing more on vol­un­teers and com­mu­ni­ty part­ners. 

Ser­w­eri said he thinks that less refugees and immi­grants will be harm­ful to the U.S. econ­o­my. 

“A lot of immi­grants and refugees are entre­pre­neurs, and they are not only con­tribut­ing eco­nom­i­cal­ly, but also are cre­at­ing employ­ment for many oth­ers,” Ser­w­eri said. “By not hav­ing this pro­gram and not wel­com­ing refugees in this coun­try, we are los­ing those advan­tages.” 

Church­es com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing refugees

Ann Gros­jean is a liai­son for the Storrs Com­mu­ni­ty Church Mer­cy & Jus­tice Team and Qui­et Cor­ner Refugee Reset­tle­ment, which has helped set­tle five refugee fam­i­lies since their found­ing in 2015. Her church is one of 30 faith com­mu­ni­ties par­tic­i­pat­ing in Qui­et Cor­ner Refugee Reset­tle­ment.  

Three fam­i­lies were from Syr­ia, one was from Afghanistan and one was from Nicaragua. Gros­jean, who is a for­mer teacher, would help the chil­dren of the fam­i­lies learn Eng­lish and would over­see fur­nish­ing the restrooms of the hous­es pro­vid­ed to the refugee fam­i­lies.   

“It has been a great way to vol­un­teer in my retire­ment and give back to the com­mu­ni­ty after 35 years of teach­ing,” Gros­jean said. 

She described the com­mu­ni­ty effort that went into sup­port­ing new refugee fam­i­lies: one vol­un­teer would teach the adults how to dri­ve while anoth­er would help the fam­i­ly open a bank account and orga­nize their finances, she said. 

With the changes to the refugee sys­tem, the group doesn’t expect to have new fam­i­lies to help. 

“The whole sys­tem fell apart,” she said.  

But vol­un­teers have formed strong con­nec­tions with the refugee fam­i­lies already here and still help them as friends, she said. “We go as long as there is a need,” Gros­jean said. 

The moth­er of one of the Syr­i­an fam­i­lies Gros­jean helped reset­tle said she is extreme­ly grate­ful for the sup­port she received.

Yas­min Almuh­sen said if she did not receive the sup­port she did, “I would not have gone to the doc­tors or go to school; I wouldn’t do any­thing.”  

Today, she is a U.S. cit­i­zen, run­ning a small cook­ing busi­ness and work­ing on get­ting her GED. Gros­jean remains a cru­cial sup­port. 

“If there is any­thing, I call her,” Almuh­sen said. 

Mem­bers of oth­er groups that were focused on new refugees say they are focused now on help­ing exist­ing mem­bers of their com­mu­ni­ties, too. 

Lavoie-Gonci, a physi­cian assis­tant, sup­port­ed refugee fam­i­lies through med­ical assis­tance, ensur­ing they went to appoint­ments, got well­ness checks and took med­ica­tions as pre­scribed. She would also assist fam­i­lies apply­ing for gov­ern­ment ben­e­fits such as the Sup­ple­men­tal Nutri­tion Assis­tance Pro­gram. Jo-Ann Staves would help with tutor­ing chil­dren, teach­ing them Eng­lish and the alpha­bet. 

Lavoie-Gonci and Staves said they have formed strong bonds with refugee fam­i­lies. They helped reset­tle one fam­i­ly from Syr­ia in 2016, and recent­ly attend­ed their old­est son’s grad­u­a­tion from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut in May 2025.

The First Con­gre­ga­tion­al Church of Old Lyme, the church part of their com­mit­tee, has also helped immi­grants resist depor­ta­tion. In 2018, dur­ing the first Trump admin­is­tra­tion, Lavoie-Gonci said the church gave sanc­tu­ary to a Pak­istani fam­i­ly who lived in the base­ment of the church for more than six months as they fought to remain in the U.S. 

Their removal was halt­ed by the court at the time. But Lavoie-Gonci said she was dev­as­tat­ed to learn the fam­i­ly chose to self-deport in March 2025 as the sec­ond Trump administration’s immi­gra­tion enforce­ment efforts esca­lat­ed.  

“The fam­i­ly had been observ­ing the increas­ing­ly dra­con­ian mea­sures used by this cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion towards immi­gra­tion mat­ters and decid­ed they need­ed to be proac­tive to exer­cise some sort of con­trol around how they left the coun­try,” Lavoie-Gonci said. 

In Decem­ber, both she and Staves were work­ing to help the preg­nant Hon­duran woman by find­ing oth­er orga­ni­za­tions that can help her pay for rent, food and util­i­ties. Lavoie-Gonci deliv­ered food and mon­ey to the woman pro­vid­ed by her and oth­er vol­un­teers.   

“Her life has been turned upside down and she is strug­gling to just fig­ure out each day. There are a cou­ple of orga­ni­za­tions that are try­ing to make things hap­pen, but it is tak­ing time and effort,” Lavoie-Gonci said.