Nonprofit organizations serving refugee communities across Kentucky are preparing for major changes to refugee resettlement, employment opportunities, and food assistance.
Refugees that are already approved to be in the United States, and have already found homes in the U.S., are beginning to see the impacts of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill signed into law on July 4. Refugees and asylum seekers alike who have yet to enter the U.S. are now in a state of limbo following an indefinite pause to the resettlement program nationwide, and the announcement of the lowest-ever cap set on refugee admissions to the country, with white South Africans, or Afrikaners, gaining priority admittance.
Employment
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) approved and implemented major restrictions to the policies that refugees utilize to gain employment in their U.S. communities. Employment Authorization Document (EAD) policies grant refugees a card allowing them to work legally in the U.S., serving as a work permit that requires regular renewal. Until recently, extensions of EADs for individuals who timely file their renewals were automatic.
However, under the Interim Final Rule (IFR) published October 30, automatic EAD extensions will end. More recently, on December 5, USCIS implemented new measures to restrict EAD validity from five years to just 18 months for many refugee categories, lengthening USCIS processing times, reading additional administrative burdens, and risking gaps in employment authorization for refugee communities.
Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, fees to apply for the EAD will be increased, and waiver programs for at-risk populations will be entirely removed. Refugee Cash Assistance (RCA), a government program for newly arrived refugees, will be reduced to a four month benefit, down from 12. Albert Mbanfu, executive director of the International Center of Kentucky in Bowling Green, said the restriction of employment authorization and the removal of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for refugee populations places them in an impossible situation.
“You take away their benefits, but give them the opportunity to work. But now, you’re revoking employment authorizations, meaning they don’t have the benefits, they don’t have the right to work, so what? What do you want them to do?” he asked.
Food assistance
A new eligibility rule removing refugees who have resettled in the U.S. is expected to impact around 7,000 refugees in Kentucky and roughly 90,000 across the country. That number is expected to rise as those refugees are impacted by employment lapses, especially for those that are set to make their way to the U.S. for the first time with limited resources in their first weeks and months in a new country. That restriction is in place until a refugee receives their green card. However, applications for green cards have been put on hold indefinitely along with the interview process for asylum seekers seeking to gain refugee status. The change officially went into effect on November 1, impacting those who were already receiving SNAP benefits as well as new applicants to the program. Also included in the president’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act was a revocation of Medicaid access for refugees, set to go into effect in October, 2026.
Slashing refugee admittance
In addition to revoking critical social safety nets for refugees, the Trump administration has dramatically cut the number of refugees to be admitted to the United States, as well as restricted where those refugees can come from. In a presidential determination, the president announced that only 7,500 refugees would be allowed to enter the U.S. in fiscal year 2026, the lowest number admitted since 1980. Of those admitted, 7,000 will be white South Africans, or Afrikaners. President Trump has claimed multiple times that this is due to a “white genocide” in South Africa. Mbanfu and many resettlement leaders dispute Trump’s claims.
“There is no genocide in South Africa. None has been established, even if our government does not recognize it. Crime, yes, exists in South Africa. That crime affects the blacks more than the whites. The blacks are killed in greater numbers than the whites, so if the issue is crime then maybe you would bring in even more black South Africans than white South Africans, but that is not the case,” Mbanfu said.
He added that the new policies reflect a disturbing change in how refugee resettlement agencies must approach their work in the coming year.
“It’s totally different. In the past years, we’ve brought in people from different nationalities, Afghanistan, Sudan, Syria, Congo, Burma, all over. But this time, we’re like, ‘Okay. You have to resettle white South Africans,’ which is unfortunate, because if you look at the definition of a refugee as stated by the United Nations, all of the Afrikaners do not qualify.”
The center in Bowling Green is approved for 100 entrants in FY 2026, all Afrikaners. That’s a drastic decline from FY 2025, when the center welcomed 597 entrants. Despite that low figure, and centers in Louisville welcoming almost 3,000 refugees last year, Mbanfu expects that Bowling Green will still have the highest number of refugees of any center in Kentucky, largely due to many resettlement agencies refusing to operate under the condition of only bringing in Afrikaners.
