The Dispatch Podcast - Ordo Amoris | Dispatch Faith

Episode Date: February 2, 2025

This is an unlocked episode of our weekly Dispatch Faith podcast, which is typically released on our members-only podcast feed, The Skiff. If you enjoy the conversation, we hope you’ll consider signing up as a full Dispatch member today. President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders related to immigration disrupted the operations of several faith-based charities that aide migrants and refugees—and Vice President J.D. Vance’s comments on CBS News’ Face the Nation further drove a wedge between those groups and the new administration. Michael Reneau is joined by Mark Seitz, Bishop of El Paso and chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Migration, and Matthew Soerens, vice president of advocacy and policy at the Christian humanitarian organization World Relief, for discussions about how their respective groups operate and how they’re preparing for what’s next. Show Notes: —Michael Warren on the clash between J.D. Vance and the Catholic Church —Michael Reneau on Evangelicals and their outlook on immigration reform Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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For this week's podcast, I spoke with two people whose organizations now find themselves grappling with an uncertain future. Catholic bishop marked sites of the El Paso, Texas Diocese, and Matthew Sorens of the Christian Relief Agency World Relief. Normally these conversations are located on our skiff feet, but today we're making this conversation open to the public. First, we'll speak with Bishop Mark Sites. Bishop Sites, thanks so much for taking the time to be with us today.

Pleasure to be with you. I think the thing to start with, just with the spate of executive orders and memoranda coming down the pike from the Trump administration over the last 10 days, I guess, wanted to get a sense of for the ministries that you all are operating in El Paso and near the border there in Texas, what things are like there now, but I'm also wondering if you can give folks a sense of kind of the scope of your ministry to immigrants and migrants, even outside of times when things are in so much flux? Well, maybe I'll just begin there.

We, as the Church of El Paso, have been quite involved with attempting to assist immigrants who are coming through and immigrants who live here. That's been a work of the church pretty much from her beginning, right? I mean, we care for people who are in greatest need. And that would certainly include immigrants practically through history. Here in El Paso, until fairly recently, we were operating five shelters. One was at my pastoral center. Now, these shelters, the primary work they were doing was receiving people who had been vetted by Border Patrol.

They turned themselves into Border Patrol, asking for asylum. And then they assured the people who interviewed them for Border Patrol that they had a reasonable claim for asylum that could be pursued in the United States. After that vetting process, they were brought to us by the Border Patrol because they couldn't immediately continue on their journey. They needed to make connections with sponsors and the like. So we housed them during a day or two, usually, something like that, as they rested a little bit and worked their way to the next step. We were doing that in four different parish facilities plus a hall that we have here. Nothing created for that purpose but used when there was a need. Now, since, oh, let's what I say?

December, I would say, we started closing some of our shelters because the numbers were going down, as we do. We try to flux with the need. And right now we have two shelters that are open, receiving people. I don't know how long they will be open because the numbers have continued to decline a great deal. Until recently, until about the middle of January, we were receiving about 200 a day. And now the numbers are more like 5, 15, somewhere in between that. One day there was three. People who are seeking asylum are not having much...

success in being able to pursue that claim in the United States anymore. We also have our largest diocesan ministry is one that provides legal assistance to immigrants who are here. It's a very, very complex process. It usually takes a lawyer to guide people through the steps that are necessary so they can have the best claim in the world. But if they don't know how to lay that out, to fill out the paperwork and so on, then they're not going to be able to get a fair shake at being able to remain in the United States. So we have a large ministry that is called Estrella of El Paso, and they continue to work on various aspects of the legal side of these issues.

Well, I was going to say, you mentioned that some of the numbers of folks coming into shelters began to decrease in December. So, I mean, in the news for the last, really 10 days since the inauguration, since Donald Trump took office again, in the news have been these executive orders that touch on everything from border policy to refugees and foreign aid. and they touch a pretty wide swath of kind of the whole immigration system. Someone I was speaking to earlier today, we were talking about how people think of immigration and don't necessarily, I think a lot of folks don't realize the different dynamics

that are at play for asylum seekers versus refugees, and those are legal statuses that are very different from one another, people coming in at the border, obviously other people who are coming in and trying to get green cards, H-1B visas, or other ways in. So I guess my question is just as, I'm just wondering if since the election in November anticipating things to change, were you all, was the diocese and, you know, charities and ministries that you all are running, were you all taking any practical steps to kind of anticipate what those changes might bring about on the ground, I guess? And you mentioned closing some shelters even weeks leading up to this. Well, we find ourselves constantly

adapting to changing situations. This particular reality is not one that you can count on remain the same tomorrow as it was today. You know, there's a constant flux. And what we had seen really, I said December, but really well before that, in this fall, the Biden administration began really clamping down on immigration and pressuring other countries. to stop people, send them back, deport them, whatever. And a lot of that was taking place from early this fall. So we were adapting. When we heard what was said on the campaign trail by the former president,

we could see that he was certainly making that a top priority of his election campaign and promised made a lot of promises along the way. We knew that changes would be coming, but by the same token, we didn't want to over-anticipate. We didn't want to over-react because, I don't know if you've noticed this, but sometimes the election rhetoric is a little different than the reality that we experience. So we were certainly reflecting on how we might respond to certain changes in this issue, but we couldn't really prepare, have something ready to go on day one.

Well, I mean, one of the things that, you know, speaking of campaign rhetoric and in some of the ways that the Trump administration has talked about things after taking office last week, has involved things. I mean, J.D. Vance made comments about this with regard to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, too, just a few days ago on CBS. Among his comments, he also kind of, I guess, charged, you could say, or admonished the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for not doing enough or maybe not having close enough eye on, for example, victims of human trafficking or children caught up in trafficking, you know, people being smuggled across the border and taken advantage of in numerous ways. You issued a statement a few days ago, and you do, I mean, you do in the second paragraph of that statement, you say, while an emphasis on anti-trafficking is welcome, several of the executive orders signed by President Trump's specifically intended to eviscerate humanitarian protections enshrined in federal law and undermine due process. I guess I do want to come back to the second part of that particular sentence here in a second. But I, like, I mean, I am wondering what all you see on the ground with regard to people being caught up in human trafficking and being taking advantage of at the border. And just, I'll probably ask you this a couple of times, I suppose, if you could wave a magic

wand in terms of policy, what do you think are the best ways to fight against that? Right. Frankly, I believe that the Catholic Church and her work, particularly her work of sheltering, has been one of the main bulwarks against trafficking, that there is. is. And it's pretty sad when the government sees the church as a cause of problems rather than the ones who are helping to prevent them. When would a child, when would a young woman be most at risk for trafficking? When they're in a shelter safe from outside influences helped to avoid a situation of desperation, or when they're left on the street, when they're left with no one, when they're stuck at the northern border of Mexico where crime is rampant and organized crime

has its way, what's the most likely situation in which a person might be trafficked? As far as allowing people to come across, the church has long asked for a reform of our immigration system, a reform that would make avenues open for people who have legitimate claims to come to the United States. that would include, first of all, asylum cases where people truly have had to flee for their lives. Our country made a commitment to that, along with most developed countries in the world after World War II, because we felt the guilt of not being responsive to the needs of those people, and then also responsive to... the needs for work, not only their needs, but our needs to fill jobs here in this country.

It's a mutually beneficial situation when we can give a work visa and people can come and work here either temporarily or with the possibility of staying. They're filling jobs that are not being filled by Americans. They're helping our economy to keep moving. moving, to keep growing, to be healthy, because one of the things that can certainly kill a healthy economy is not to have sufficient people to do the tasks that are at hand. Immigration for work purposes needs to always be responsive to the changing realities of work. It doesn't do any good to give a work visa if there aren't jobs in the United States, right? But, But by the same token, if indeed there are more than 8 million jobs standing open in this country,

it's to our benefit and theirs. So a healthy immigration system would permit that kind of access. And I might say we've always mentioned that another aspect of a healthy system would be to put our emphasis, not on the border, would simply shows kind of a snapshot of the symptoms of a problem, but rather upon the situation in sending countries where people are forced to flee. We haven't been able to do that as a country. Yes, we send aid, but not the kind of help that is really necessary, which will take a long-term commitment, what I mean by that is not two years, according to the election cycle, but over the course of five years, 10 years, things like we did in Colombia

to help them overcome their situation with, you know, practically civil war with guerrilla groups. We can do things that really help to stabilize. countries. We've certainly done a lot to destabilize, unfortunately, you know, our government and then also our appetite for drugs. So the statement that I read a few minutes ago, that began with speaking about the trafficking situation. I mean, maybe you're trying to touch on that now, but you say that the Trump administration with some of these executive orders are intended to eviscerate humanitarian protections in Trident and Federal Law and also undermine due process. I wonder if you could just kind of expound on the undermining of due process. Well,

I'll just let you kind of respond to that. Well, I guess the most immediate example of that is the plan to do mass deportations, as they're referred to. There's a reason that we haven't been doing mass deportations, and that is because people who are in the United States, whether citizens or not, have basic human rights, which, by the way, are protected by amendments to our Constitution. And these rights call for one thing for due process when a person is being, you know, brought before legal actions. Mass deportations mean that people are going to be brought together in a group and they're going to be deported. put in prison or deported, as quickly as possible. And these due process rights are going to be set aside.

The last time the United States did mass deportations, as I've looked at the history, was in the 30s. People who have studied those actions, concluded that as many as 40%, maybe more, actually, of those who were deported, were actually American citizens. That's my concern. You know, they say, well, we're going to be going after criminals, and they very often say

people who are violent criminals. Well, wonderful. Nobody disagrees about that. But they're taking up in it, and they admit this, many people who are not violent and haven't even committed a crime. And if they simply don't have their papers in order, even if they're not, they simply don't have their papers in order. even if they've been in the process to regularize those papers,

they're part of that group that are going to be tossed out and put into very dangerous situation. I was having a conversation with a friend earlier this evening before you and I began recording. He was making the point saying that under the Biden administration, things had gotten so loose, particularly at the border. He sees the actions, the immediate actions, by the Trump administration to clamp down on the border

and also get as many illegal immigrants or undocumented immigrants out of the country as many out of the country as we can. He sees that as kind of common sense and trying to swing the pendulum back to where he saw had swung too far in a loose sort of sense. I think that that, I mean, I don't know, he and I quibbled for a minute about the latter part

of that equation, stuff that you just touched on. But I think that there's a sense that's, you know, in order to kind of get back to a balanced sort of approach with immigration at the border, that extreme action is needed right now to really kind of choke things off. And so I'm just wondering what you would say to folks like that who say, look, maybe we don't need to have these sorts of policies in perpetuity, but in order to get things back to some kind of an equilibrium with regards to immigration or border enforcement, we need some extreme actions in the short term.

So to bring people back or the situation back to equilibrium, how many people are you willing to see slaughtered for this? How many people are you willing to put at risk of their life? And how many families are you willing to divide? And how many kids are you willing to traumatize? Is crossing the border a misdemeanor? In fact, it is? Or is it a capital crime? Come on, people, please. You know, what the church is saying is, let's, we've got to, if we seek justice, it has to be tempered with a concern for the

well-being of human beings. You know, they are not just numbers. They're real people who came, they didn't leave their country for fun. They left because of situations that caused them to say, we cannot survive here. Now, any exceptions to that group? If you find anybody that just did it on a lark, okay, send them back. But this mass deportation plan to cause equilibrium, it's going to result in the death of many people. Frankly, that's not an exaggeration. For one thing, they have nothing in those home countries. They sold everything. A lot of them are in debt just to get here in the first place. And those countries already are filled with people who have nothing, you know. But besides that, as I say, you'd be amazed at the percentage of people

who tell us in the shelters, we were told, get out of your house, the gang wants to use it. We were told that the organized crime wants your son, your daughter to be part of the group, part of the gang. We were told that if you don't pay a level of extortion for having your business continue, we're going to kill you and they don't have the money. All kinds of circumstances like that led them to leave in the first place. And you want to accept the responsibility for throwing them back into those situations? How can we justify that? morally. Well, so that gets me into, which referred to this earlier, part of the conversation that's going on right now, J.D. Vance, Vice President J.D. Vance made some comments to CBS News last

weekend, again, kind of, I guess, admonished or criticized the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. One of the groups that you work very closely with, obviously, you're a, I guess, an officer or a committee on migration. On migration, right. So, I mean, basically, said the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops ought to be maybe a bit concerned about lining its own pockets, using money from federal grants for refugee resettlement and other programs. But he also has made other comments in subsequent days, kind of referring to Latin phrase ordo amorous, but basically the way in which we order our loves, right, that we are to love most of the people in our own households, our own families. And then outside of that, you know,

further degrees of family and then love our own communities after that, then love our own citizens. And then after that, we can love or, or, you know, have more concern for people outside of our own boundaries. But trying to, I mean, making the case that this is actually part of, you know, small Orthodox Christianity. And this is a way to order our loves. So I'm just wondering, A, your response to that, that's sort of a formulation. And then B, I guess a larger question is the degree to which, I don't know, comments like that toward the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops,

is it dividing Catholics right now in the U.S.? I mean, immigration is one of those hot-button issues that it's always divisive when we talk about it often is divisive in and of itself. I'm wondering if that just is for a person in your position and other U.S. Catholics, is that kind of an extra measure of divisiveness? Is that helpful way to kind of talk about some of these issues right now?

I'd like to talk with the vice president and... inform him because I don't think he's well informed, apparently, about the work that the Catholic Church does for the poor. If the federal government decides that the church is capable of assisting people, perhaps more efficiently, better than the federal government can, if we're doing something that is a responsibility accepted by the U.S. government to resettle refugees, who have no place else to go. And if we're spending money to do that, is that lining our pockets,

or is that in cooperation with the federal government helping the poor and helping to see that when they come here, they can make a smooth transition and not be on the dole or something like that, you know? That's what we do. And yes, it costs money, But it's a commitment the U.S. government made, again, after World War II, to be able to help refugees who have led war, bled famine, and have no place else to go. There's a very careful vetting process and so on.

But to take a Catholic group or another NGO, you name it, and say, Well, by helping the poor, they're lining their pockets. I don't know where that comes from. As far as the Boro Amoris, certainly no one would disagree that you have a primary responsibility to serve your most immediate family and then the community around you. But I think one mistake that people make

in understanding the... teaching of Jesus, is to think, okay, as long as I'm loving them, then I'm fulfilling his will. But there's a real problem with that in the gospel. Let's start with the parable of the Good Samaritan. Was that guy that was waylaid on the side of the road, a member of the family of the priest, the Levite that passed by, or of the Samaritan who stopped? I don't think so.

That wasn't the point of the story. He was answering a question, by the way, it was, who is my neighbor? He's asking the exact question that that Ordo and Maris is addressing. So while we have certainly an even greater responsibility to those who are close to us, It doesn't mean we can ignore the needs of people who are around us more broadly.

And the fact is, we're the wealthiest nation. And we spend a lot of money, Michael, on things that are pure luxury. I cannot buy the notion, oh, we can't even take care of our own. That's baloney. You know, we really can. And I think we have a responsibility. Our nation has believed it had a responsibility, at least until now. I don't know how much you follow the work of Ross Douthet, New York Times columnist.

He was on one of our other podcasts earlier this week with Jonah Goldberg and made the point. He was talking about politics, but I think this has, I think this carries over to conversations like this, too, that are both political but broader than politics. made the point that one of the dynamics that play in the 2024 election and kind of the state of where we see things in the early days of 2025 is that in many ways Democrats lost some of the culture wars with this election. This election was people talk about vibe ships, you know, quote-unquote vibe ships. And this election was a vibe ship. But rost out that really kind of pin it down to, no, Democrats or progressives or liberals

or, you know, whatever group you want to call them, lost culture wars. wars or lost some of the culture wars, and this is kind of the splash after all that happens. I wonder if you take that kind of a sentiment, which I think he's largely right about when it comes to politics, but if you take that kind of a sentiment and apply it to immigration, and again, you made the point that there ebbs and flows all the time, public policy changes all the time. But it does feel like underneath the public policy and underneath the electoral realities, that there has been, I guess, a vibe shift, to put it in, you know, I'm in parlance now. There has been a vibe shift with regards to immigration in the last few years.

And again, you mentioned that the church has been around for a very long time, weather's many ebbs and flows and many vibe shifts. With the moment that we're in right now with regards to immigration, how do you, do you think that's a fair way to put it about there being some kind of a culture war or cultural shift, vibe shift, whatever? And what do you make a, what, what do you make of the next few years as far as how some of these conversations will go, we're public sentiment with regards to immigration. Well, I think there has been a good deal of shift that we're seeing. I don't see that by any means as a final direction for our country.

I think that the possibility of change is very great. I think that people have received a lot of bad information, frankly. You know, and I trust their inner goodness, the inner goodness of my fellow citizens to be able to say, we need another look at this. You know, if we can somehow help to correct the narrative, the one, for instance, that says, they're all criminals, you know, they're all drug abusers or rapists or, you know, they've been spoken, immigrants have been spoken of in such broad general terms that I think it's really affected the way that people look at them.

So we've got to work to help people to know the immigrants. that live next door, you know, and in their communities, because I don't think they'd feel the same way if they knew them. And even the statistics show that it is an extremely small percentage of immigrants that have committed crimes. In fact, immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born people. Studies have shown that more than once. I also, frankly, I do see it as,

a challenge to the church because we see that we have to draw people closer, you know, that we have to be more effective in getting our message out because I think that, you know, the church's voice has been really dampened quite a bit in our day. So we have to announce the good news again, you know. We have to get that word about love and mercy out there. As I say, the church, we certainly accept that there needs to be borders of nations. We accept that we and believe very firmly that there should be an orderly process. But we think people have really the wrong impression about the impact of immigrants,

in our country. I think there's something really fundamental here about the way we look at our fellow human beings, frankly. Do we see them people as primarily a burden? You know, and the more people, the more problems? Or do we see people as the greatest treasure that we might have in our midst? And so when we import goods, we have no problem about that. We want free trade. But when people... Well, maybe not anymore with the new presidential administration, not so free anymore.

True enough. We'll see how that all works out. But somehow we see things as beneficial and people as a problem. And that's a problem. So I guess you, I mean, ask probably an obvious question. The whole ethic of America first

that we must take care of our own before we can take care of the outside world. I guess you've already done this to some degree, but how do you respond to that particular proposition? Well, I'd love someone to propose to me a plan to arrive at Utopia. Somehow, I just don't think we're going to get there. It's not part of life in this world. And if you keep putting off your charitable work on behalf of those who are most in need, then you're never going to get to it, and you'll never be living the gospel. Besides that, if you want to talk to people who maybe aren't people of faith, I think you have to say you'll never get to a point where this world might begin to be a place where divisions are ended, where people live in some degree of harmony, unless you're going to be caring for those who are most vulnerable and in need.

If you just care for the rich and the powerful, if those are the only ones that count, we're all in trouble. And do you, I mean, draw distinctions between everything that you just mentioned, drawing distinctions between the role of the church and doing that versus the role of the state. So I think that's another, you know, counter argument to some of that too, is someone, and perhaps it would be a vice president ofance, I don't know, but might look at the church and say, I can get along with that for the church, but in terms of state policy and the state, policy has to be crafted in such a way that we can't really involve ourselves in some of those questions, let the church do its work. Well, a couple of points there. First of all,

if something is true, whoever learns that truth is going to benefit from it, right? And whoever practices it is going to be better off. So I don't care where you get it. You can find it wherever you want. But if the teachings of Jesus have the ring of truth, you better pursue them for your good, for the good of your state, you know, for the good of the world. I think an important part of the message, the church has always been seen in our country as a benefit to the well-being of the nation, go back to the federalist papers, you know. And the church can continue to serve in that role. And also, I think, as an important check on some of our behaviors, one of the roles of the church is to be a conscience for people when they act

in terms of their life in the state, to attempt to do some kind of schizophrenic separation where that's the stuff you do in church. And this is the stuff you do in your life is untenable. or a Christian, pretty much for anybody who is a believer. Well, Bishop Sites, thank you again for taking the time to talk through some of these issues. Very much appreciate it. So thank you. My pleasure. Good talking to you, Michael. God bless. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important.

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This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business, your writing, or a new project, Squarespace brings everything together in one place. With Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools, you can launch a website that looks sharp from day one. Use one of their award-winning templates or try the new Blueprint AI, which tailors a site for you based on your goals and style. It's quick, intuitive, and requires zero coding experience. You can also tap into built-in analytics and see who's engaging with your site and email campaigns to stay connected with subsisting. subscribers or clients, and Squarespace goes beyond design. You can offer services, book appointments,

and receive payments directly through your site. It's a single hub for managing your work and reaching your audience without having to piece together a bunch of different tools. All seamlessly integrated. Go to Squarespace.com slash dispatch for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, use offer code dispatch to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Matthew, thanks so much for taking the time during what I'm sure is a very busy week for you and your team. We appreciate you helping us understand what's going on in the situation. Yeah, thank you for having me, Michael. Yeah, first things first, I think I'm sure a lot of our listeners will be familiar with World Relief,

but many probably won't. So I wonder if you could just kind of give an overview real quick of the work that you and the folks at World Relief do and also how that work fits into kind of the larger ecosystem of refugee resettlement agencies, but also just about the other humanitarian work that you all do here and around the world. Sure. So World Relief has been around this year for 80 years. We were started out of a church in Boston in response to a displacement crisis in the days after World War II when churches in the U.S. connected through the, at that point, newly formed National Association of Evangelicals, wanted to come alongside churches at that point in Europe to help rebuild and to respond to human

suffering in the name of Jesus. And 80 years later, we've operated in more than 100 different countries and a mission of boldly engaging the world's greatest crises in partnership with the church. And that includes in the United States. We're still international. A lot of our programming about half our staff actually are in Africa. But the other place where we have a large concentration of staff is here in the United States, where we are one of 10 refugee resettlement organizations. That's been a partnership that we've had with the U.S. State Department going back to the 1970s. Basically, that means we're part of this public-private partnership whereby the U.S. government, the State Department, working collaboratively with the Department of Homeland Security,

identifies refugees abroad, people who meet the U.S. legal definition of someone who's fled a well-founded fear of persecution for very specific reasons, including religion, political opinion, and nationality. And the government, of course, does the vetting overseas. It's a very small share of the world of refugees who get considered for refugee or settlement. Last year, it was 100,000 in what was kind of a high year, out of 37 million refugees in the world. So roughly one quarter of 1% of the world refugees. And then our role at World Relief starts when the State Department tells us we've got a family arriving at the airport in Sacramento or in Austin or in Chicago where I am. And we confirm we'll be there to pick them up.

We get to work right away on finding housing, furnishing an apartment. and ideally, whenever possible, finding a team of volunteers from a church, we call out a good neighbor team, that'll be a part of that integration process for that family from the day that they arrive. The way that that functions government historically has provided the funds for the first 90 days. That covers most importantly rent.

That's the biggest expense. And people can imagine the cost of rent has gone up for refugees, just like everyone else in the last several years, as well as the staffing costs of a caseworker and some other basic expenses towards the goal of giving. that family onto their feet within those 90 days and into a job and able to be economically self-sufficient. That's kind of what we've been at for since the 70s in partnership, both with the U.S. State Department and then also with thousands of local churches around the United

States. Yeah, well, that's a helpful overview. Thank you. I guess, I mean, to start off, we're recording this on Thursday, January 30th, and so the new administration has been in office for 10 days. Suffice to say it's been a tumultuous 10 days when it comes to, to organizations like World Relief and the work that you all do. I guess, you know, I want to get into some of the specifics of particular orders or kind of edicts from the administration a little bit later in the conversation. I guess, Matt, take me through, though. I mean, we've known the results of the election for two months.

I know you and folks you work with at World Relief and other agencies, too, that are dealing kind of with on-the-ground situations with regards to immigration and refugee resettlement. I mean, you all knew that a sea change was going to come, and it's not the first time, but you've known changes were going to come. I guess walking me through a little bit, like when you knew that the posture toward immigration

and refugees was going to change with the election results in November, kind of what some of the expectations were and how you all were preparing for those, what you all had planned to do, or I don't know, had planned contingencies for perhaps. But then, you know, some of the, I'll get into this a little bit later, too, I guess, but some of the decisions that came down the pike last week were over and above some of the things

that you all had planned for, too. So I guess, again, not all these changes are catching you all completely flat-footed or off-guard. The writing was on the wall that changes were coming. What all had you done to kind of prepare for what that looked like and the reality for the folks that you all are serving? Yeah, I appreciate that question, Michael. You know, unlike 2017, when I think we were. frankly, unprepared for a refugee shutdown. In 2016, President, that time the candidate,

Trump, said he would suspend Muslim admissions to the United States, and we had some religious freedom concerns with that, and we believe Muslims are made in the image of God, and we want to serve them. But it hadn't occurred to us that he would shut down all refugee or settlement. And we knew very well that at that point, the majority of refugees were Christians. In fact, the most common group being resettled in 2017 was Burmese Christians who had fled persecution because of their faith in Jesus. And it just hadn't occurred to us that they would also be shut out, but they were with that first suspension of refugee admissions, January 27th, 2017. So this time around, we were much more prepared for that. We, President Trump both did that in his

first term, but he also said during the campaign, he would suspend refugee admissions on day one, and he did. He suspended refugee admissions for 90 days. Under the terms of that order, the president will review that and consider whether refugees, admissions should reopen based on the recommendations of the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Secretary of State. And we're doing everything we can and have been doing even before the inauguration trying to persuade President Trump that he says he values legal immigration, and we do too. He says that, and importantly, refugee or settlement is an unequivocally legal form of immigration, like this goes back to a law passed with unanimous consent by the U.S. Senate

in 1980. President Trump has also spoken frequently about his commitment to standing with persecuted Christians. And we want to highlight for him that the refugee resettlement program is one of the primary ways that the United States government stands with those fleeing religious persecution. In fact, in last year in 2024, there were 100,000 refugees who were settled to the United States. And just about 30,000 of them were Christians who are from the 50 countries where open doors, which is a religious persecution, watchdog group, says that Christians face the most severe persecution in the world. Sorry, just for scope, Matt, of those 100,000 refugees who came of the U.S. last year, about how many did World Relief have, you know, direct involvement with?

Just around 10% of those. And that's pretty typical year to year. And there are 10 resettlement agencies, so they don't take exactly equal shares of that, but we resettled just about 10% of the total. So that's the first executive order. It was disappointing, but not surprising. And we continue to urge President Trump to reconsider and to reinstate the refugee settlement program, consistent with his own commitments after that 90-day review. We were working towards that goal. And frankly, last week was hard because a lot of our caseworkers were calling people in the United States who are family members of people who had had a flight scheduled for February and having to share with them the really hard news that they're actually not able to come. A colleague of mine, who's Burmese in Washington State, which was settled, I think 17, 18 years ago in that category of a lot of Burmese Christians. Her cousin, who she described as like a brother, has been in a refugee camp that whole time.

And his case was finally approved for, you know, in the coming. weeks, and she is actually in the position of telling lots of people that their families can't come, including her own family, was affected. So that was the first part of this. But then on Friday, as we're recording, so like less than a week ago, we got a notice from the State Department that honestly took us very much by surprise. We got the instruction from the U.S. State Department to stop all work on the Refugee Resettlement Program for individuals who have already arrived. We're in that 90-day window. So not looking 90 days into the future, like the first order, but looking 90 days backwards. For World Relief, it's about 4,000 people

whom we've resettled in the last 90 days, some of whom were on day 89, but plenty of whom were here in the last few weeks. And we have committed to those individuals, our government has committed to them, that we would help provide housing for those first three months, and that initial support so that they can move towards self-sufficiency beyond that point. And I mean, literally, we got this order Friday afternoon. Friday evening, we had Afghans who have special immigrant visas, so similar to refugees and eligible for refugee resettlement assistance, but not technically refugees, so not subject to the suspension. They were arriving Friday evening in the Afghan airport, or I'm sorry, they were arriving Friday evening in the Sacramento airport. These are individuals

who have been verified to have come at risk because of their service of the U.S. military or some other part of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. And we're being told to stop all work. Of course, we were still there at the airport. We're not going to leave them at the airport. We still had housings lined up for them. We still had, you know, a warm meal prepared. Those are the things we always do for a new arrival. But we need to figure out how to pay for that now with something other than the funds that the government has committed to us. And, you know, that it's been a part of a partnership that goes back to the 70s. Like, this is not a Biden era program. And our peer organizations, you know, the Catholic Church is a settlement agency,

groups like Church World Service or highest, which is a Jewish organization. Most of these are settlement agencies are faith-based, but they're all in a very similar position. So I guess that means that you all are really relying on, you know, private donations, which you also listed anyway. So that's, there is one misconception I saw among some folks saying, someone tweeted that World Relief has indicated they're closing their doors and they're shutting down their operations because of these government contracts or government grants, as it were. and I corrected a couple of folks I saw that that's not really what's going on here. That's not how this works.

Yeah. So I appreciate the opportunity to clarify all sorts of things get set on social media, many of which are not true or only partially true. We are doing everything we can to keep our doors open and frankly relying upon our church partners more than ever. We've always relied upon our church partners. I mean, our volunteers who are, I don't even have the exact number, but we have so many volunteers around the country. they do a great deal of the work. They're the ones actually building relationship with the newly arrived refugee family, way beyond what one case worker with lots of cases to manage can possibly do. And frankly, there's also the private revenue side of this. We raise money from churches,

from individual donors, from corporations and foundations, which we're always really grateful for, and we tend to apply that after that 90 days, because the government's offering to cover the upfront costs, but we also have learned in 45 years of doing this, that actually most refugees still need some support beyond 90 days, which any one of us if dropped halfway around the world into a different language context would probably appreciate. It might take more than 90 days to fully be integrated. So now we're calling every church partner we've ever had and basically explaining the government has indicated they're not going to follow through on this commitment. We hope they changed their mind. We're asking them to change their mind. But we could really use the support of our church

partners right now. And we have been really, this is the part where I have to not get like, break into crying because that's embarrassing out of a podcast, but we've been overwhelmed by the support from our church partners, from individual donors and volunteers. It's still not enough to cover the gap that we have, which is, and you can do the math on 4,000 people, rents cost for three months. It's a lot, and that, you know, our staff costs as well. But we have been really encouraged by churches stepping up. And I would say, that's where I think the president might have made a misconception. If he thinks that evangelical Christians wants to cure borders, he's absolutely right. We've done polling on that. There's no question 90 plus percent of evangelical

Christians will affirm that. But if he thinks that evangelical Christians want refugee resettlement stopped, the polling suggests he's wrong about that. 70 percent of evangelical Christians from Lifeway Research's surveys say that they believe the U.S. has a moral responsibility to receive refugees. And almost a third of evangelical Christians have been personally involved in refugee or immigrant ministry. And those are our best advocates. Those are the people who are really worked up at what's happening right now. Actually, I mean, I talked to you as about a year ago for a story that I reported after the Lifeway poll that you're referencing, or Lifeway Survey, you're referencing, after it was released, kind of showing this tension among evangelical Christians in the U.S.

So many of whom, I mean, you know, 80% of whom support Donald Trump, support Donald Trump in the election, but almost the same percentage, you know, end up saying that, yes, refugee resettlement, care, however you want to put it, is an integral part to kind of living out their faith. I guess that, so that does get me to one question. I think there's any time that we're talking about immigration, you know, the big umbrella of immigration, it's very easy to kind of throw different categories of things into it and people sometimes gloss over what we're talking about. And refugee resettlement is not the same thing as, you know, adjudicating cases for people

seeking asylum at the southern border. it's certainly not the same thing as someone coming over the southern border illegally. I just wonder and you mentioned special immigrant visas for folks who were folks who tried to get out of Afghanistan after the fall of Kabul

in 2021 during the Biden administration. I wonder too if you all are seeing where kind of in the zeitgeist the conversations get mixed up and these things get conflated and particularly again like the politically active right and maybe folks online if

you guys are catching stuff at world relief where people are obviously, you know, misinterpreting or conflating refugee resettlement versus, you know, other parts, other dynamics in the whole immigration conversation right now. Yes. I mean, I find it's good for my spiritual well-being to not spend too much time online and also to remind myself that that's not necessarily a representative sub-sample of all Americans or all Christians. And I'd love to go back to actually like, you know, a statistically sound poll that tells me what Christians actually believe because it's deeply encouraging to me, and consistent with the people I go to church with on Sunday and the people that I interact with in churches around the country.

But clearly, there is some confusion on different immigration categories. And in acknowledging that, I want to also say, every one of those immigrants is someone, I believe, is made in the image of God. And we affirm the dignity of all people. And I want us to have a functional asylum system that offers protection to people fleeing persecution who show up at the border, but a functional system, which is not, frankly, what we currently have. But regardless of what you think about the border, the refugees that I'm talking about didn't come through the border. They came in on airplanes on flights that were arranged for them by the U.S.

government and its partners, although actually they have to pay back their plane tickets. So there's this idea of their, it's all handouts. They actually have to pay those back. But the government invited them. They arranged the travel after an extensive vetting process, a process that the Heritage Foundation has looked at and said is the most thorough vetting that any category of visitor or immigrant who comes into the United States is subjected to. Regardless of whether you think the refugee or settlement program should exist, and I of course

do, and I think there's a great case to be made for that, it's pretty clear the president has a lot of authority that Congress has given him on refugee admissions, and we're going to make the best case we can to him to continue refugee admissions. But I think most Americans and certainly most Christians, because the words from Jesus are, but your yes be your yes, would say that if our government has already made a commitment to particular people to Afghans who have shown their loyalty to our country by serving alongside the U.S. military as translators or in other ways, the people who are persecutor for their faith in Jesus, or frankly, for other minority religions or for Yazidis or others,

we ought to keep that commitment. And none of them should end up homeless. And we're doing the very best we can at World Relief to ensure that doesn't happen. But it is a steep hill to climb. It's a huge gap. And honestly, my hope and my prayer has been that I do pray that the government does what I think is the right thing. I'd be just as happy if the church step up.

up in such a remarkable way that it both met the full need and showed the government that actually the American people want the U.S. to continue to be a refuge for those who have been carefully vetted, who have been confirmed to have fled a well-founded for persecution, and that they can understand that distinction. We can want secure borders and affirm that that is an appropriate governmental function and also value legal immigration and protecting people who have fled persecution. You mentioned earlier in the conversation that you all, I mean, again, kind of a flurry of executive actions last week and then kind of edict and it was followed up on Friday by a memo from the Office of Management and Budget pulling back on foreign aid, all

foreign aid. And that's what halted the work you all are doing with refugees already on the ground, right? With, I guess with a clarification, that came from the State Department because then on Monday there was something from the Office of Management and Budget, which has been confusing to anyone trying to pay attention. So Friday, the State Department, said on the authority of an executive order on realigning foreign assistance, which we'd seen and were a little concerned about, especially as it relates to the U.S. AID programs, the World Relief operates outside of the United States. We were waiting for guidance on other exceptions for life-saving programs. And actually, at this point, I'm thankful they have made some exceptions

internationally for life-saving programs. We want to affirm that. Thanks, Secretary Rubio, for that. But what was confusing to us is that was also the rationale for shutting down the U.S. refugee resettlement, initial resettlement program, looking backwards to refugees already resettled, which honestly, I just had never occurred to me that that would be considered foreign assistance because it's people in our country already. But then to compound the confusion on Monday, there was this much broader order from, and it was like leaked the Washington Post and then confirmed to be real, going into effect apparently on Tuesday from the Office of Management budget that affected a much, much broader range of issues than just foreign assistance.

I mean, it was like basically all grants to nonprofits. And within 24 hours, that had been halted by a court. And then the Trump administration actually withdrew it. And I had people texting me and posting on social media like, praise the Lord, world release, refuge, settlement programs will be fine. And of course, I was consulting with our legal counsel. And we would love for us for that to mean we're fine, but we actually don't think that it does. We don't think that that's, it means we're back at Friday.

We still have an order saying do not serve, you know, that we, have to stop work on that initial resettlement program. And until we receive other notice from the State Department, we have to make really hard decisions based on the presumption that that is in effect. What are those? So give me some examples of the hard decisions you all are now having to make. I mean, we're already, we're already furlowing staff because we can't sustain our existing infrastructure

with these decisions that the State Department has made. And frankly, we have to prioritize the cash that we do have from churches and individuals to cover things like rent. Like that's our first priority is making sure that people are not on the streets. Do you, you mentioned earlier in the conversation that there was optimism, at least regarding some of the previous executive orders. And now, yeah, the State Department memo went out Friday, then followed up by the OMB stuff you just explained and unpacked for us. I mean, how optimistic are you all in your legal counsel? that folks in now the Marco Rubio-led State Department will, I don't know, backtrack some of these things or reconsider some of these kind of quick decisions that have

been made? We hope they will. I don't feel comfortable speculating and how confident we will, except for that. We're certainly not in a spot to just presume that this will go away. I think we have to make, you know, really difficult decisions. And this is not hyperbolic when we tell our donors and our church partners that we desperately need help, right now. Like if we don't have the funds to cover all the rent checks that we need to make in the next few months. And to be clear, that's not just us. It's every resettlement agency. We're probably, I don't want to brag, but we're probably in a better place because we have such good relationship with so many local churches. And not all, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong,

not all 10 resettlement agencies that are operating in the U.S. are religiously affiliated or, you know, faith-based organization. So that automatically, as you kind of said, builds in a little bit more of a support network or kind of partnership network, maybe if you want to put it that way, to kind of help shoulder the burden of some of these expenses. Yeah, that's right. I think the majority are Christian, and then there's one Jewish organization, but there are, I'd say, three organizations that are not faith-based. And they've got volunteers, of course, as well, and supporters as well. But I do think our model at all, our World Relief, going back to, I mean, we were started by a missionary couple. Our settlement program was started by a missionary couple

from who had served in Vietnam, who had come back to the States with the Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination, and they were getting calls from the people they had served in their church planting efforts in Vietnam who had at the fall of Saigon in 1975 had had to flee and ended up as refugees and basically sending telegrams and letters and making phone calls pleading for help. And this very brave couple, and I had the opportunity to meet Evelyn Mangum before she passed away a few years ago, well into her 90s. But they basically called every church that had ever helped them, supported them as missionaries overseas, and said, could you take a family in? And there was some governmental help, even at that point. This has always been this public-private partnership.

But for us at World Relief, we are thankful and we value our partnership with the federal government, but our most important partner has always been the church and we'll always be the church. And that will be true whether or not there is a governmental refugee resettlement program. And to be clear, too, the U.S. refugee resettlement program does not exist because there are nonprofits or agencies like World Relief who have lobbied the government, the federal government to do this. The federal government had already, you know, decades past, as you said, 1980, decided that this was in the government, the federal government's best interest, the country's best interest, to resettle these folks. And there's a lot of philosophical, you know, conversations to be had about who can do that, who is best equipped to do that. vice to say it ends up organizations like World Relief, you know, the federal government deemed organizations like World Relief the best avenues through which to do that work that it has already had already decided was worth doing. It was in the best interest of the country to do. Is that a fair? Yes. And I mean, I think actually, you know, I'm a big believer in, you know, you go back to like the 90s, there was a push to let's let faith-based organizations be a part of working in partnership

with government, despite the fact that they have these distinct religious beliefs, our staff at World Relief, affirm a statement of faith, we are Christians. We're not, we don't apologize for that. Sometimes when a different administration is in authority, we have to, you know, gently push to ensure our rights to sustain our identity as a Christian organization. We push back at that under President Biden. But I am a big believer of the idea that actually, if the U.S. Congress has determined that this is a goal of the American people, this is a actually a function of government that is consistent with our national interests. Whether that at the start, it was because we needed to keep our commitment to the South Vietnamese people

who had been our allies who were at risk because of the military situation in Vietnam. And frankly, in the midst of the Cold War, we needed to stand with the people who were on our side. Over time, it was also people fleeing religious persecution, both Jewish, Christian, other religious traditions as well. It's, you know, we've had a similar situation to Vietnam in many ways with the Afghans who've come in the last few years. If that's a U.S. national interest to keep that commitment,

frankly, the relatively small amount of money per refugee that the U.S. State Department allocates for this, it's $3,000 per refugee that covers that three months of housing as well as the staffing and administrative support costs, you can do the math on how well that works to cover rent in, you know, most parts of the country at this point.

But that relatively small, amount of money gets expanded many times over because we bring in the volunteers. We bring in, you know, we don't use much of that cash on furniture or household items because that all gets donated by churches. Churches who sometimes will put it up on stage and pray over it as this is going to this new family that's arriving. It's actually an amazing system where the government and the private, non-government, in this case the church, are working together towards an interest that's both in the church's interest because we have this command to love our neighbors. We have specific instructions in the book of Leviticus to love the foreigner who resides among

you. We have a command to practice hospitality, which in the Greek of the New Testament is to literally love strangers. We are told that by welcoming strangers, we welcome Jesus himself from Matthew 25. We want to make disciples of all nations, and we don't do that by proselytism and tricking people into becoming Christians, but we do, as First Peter says, we're ready to give an answer to everyone who asks us for the reason for the hope that we have, and people come into this context of religious freedom. So we have all these reasons that this is in our interest as the church, but it also meets a secular interest that is the U.S. government has determined in our national interest. It's in the interest of our foreign policy. It's in the economic

interest because while there's a little bit of cost up front, a connoisse at Notre Dame have looked at this and found that it's usually around year seven or eight or so that refugees go from receiving more from taxpayers than they're paying in to paying in more than they receive. And by year 20, they've contributed an average of $21,000 more in taxes than the total cost of governmental expenditures on their behalf going back to that initial resettlement, any kind of public benefits that they might have qualified for, all those things. So this is actually a great system. I'm not a big government guy who thinks that everything government does functions well.

I think this is actually one of the best things our government does, because it leverages a pretty small amount of taxpayer dollars. And the reality is nobody volunteers to help the government run a government program, but lots of people volunteer with their church. And that is exactly how refugee or settlement works. And the irony in all of that to me is, The rationale that the Trump administration gave for the suspension of refugee settlement cites situations in Springfield, Ohio, and Whitewater, Wisconsin, and here in Chicago

with Venezuelans who were showing up on buses, and notes with some degree of accuracy that there was questions about the community's ability to absorb these large numbers of people showing up at once. Now, notably, those were people who had been allowed in by our government. so they're not here unlawfully, but also very importantly, they weren't resettled as refugees. Because had they been resettled as refugees,

they would have been met at the airport by a team from a church and a staff person from World Relief. They would have had that initial housing and that helped finding a good job that would allow them to be economically self-sufficient three months in. For the sake of those Haitians in Springfield,

I wish that they would have had the opportunity to be resolved with refugees. It would have been better for them and absolutely better for the community of Springfield as well. And frankly, had the State Department come to World Relief and said, can you resettle 20,000 Haitians? We would have said yes, but we wouldn't have put them all in one town of 60,000 people. We would have bred them across the United States looking where is their housing availability, where are their churches ready to help welcome people,

where are their job of, you know, the right kind of ratio of what you can earn as an entry-level worker to what housing costs are. And that's actually a model of why we need refugee or settlement and to not only suspend it going forward, but to pull back that assistance, we might have Springfield-like situations if the resettlement agencies aren't able to do their work with the fairly significant number of people who've come just in the last three months. I really appreciate you kind of unpacking some of that because, again, I think it's so, it's so common for all these kind of dynamics and complex dynamics at that to get flattened into, we need fewer immigrants in the United States. And by golly, that's what this administration is doing. And there's so much that

gets lost in those quick soundbites of real life playing out in different ways. And frankly, different organizations and different communities, I guess being equipped to handle, you know, integration or getting people acclimated, whatever you want to say, but getting folks resettled. So thanks for that, Matt. I appreciate you taking the time. Again, I know you're probably running around, as it were, seeing to a lot of things. But thanks so much for being with us.

Yeah, thank you, Michael. We appreciate it. I appreciate the dispatch too.