President Donald Trump’s order that indefinitely pauses the nation’s refugee resettlement efforts stranded about 60 individuals and family members set to arrive in Rochester next month.
And it upended the lives of a projected 125,000 people expected to be admitted to the United States this year.
“We see them in the system. Some of them are getting deleted,” said Getachew Bashir, director of the refugee, immigration and employment department with Rochester’s Catholic Charities Family and Community Services.

He was referring specifically to the 60 men, women and children bound for the Flower City.
"And we don't expect to see any of them,” he said.
Trump’s Monday directive was to halt the program effective at 12:01 a.m. this upcoming Monday. But it was quickly followed by the State Department immediately canceling all refugee flights.
Of late, Rochester predominately has welcomed refugees from Afghanistan, the Congo and Syria, Bashir said. The number of arrivals expected next month was about average and likely included people with family already here. The program helped settle 1,100 refugees in the area last year.
Among them was a man from Kenya, who Bashir said arrived 90 days ago after spending 30 years in a refugee camp. He came ahead, expecting his wife and six children would follow.
“And he was, he was just crying, literally. When I say crying, he was literally crying in front of us to help him — not knowing that this was coming,” Bashir said, adding: “This is just a common story.”
It was unclear what impact the executive order “realigning” the refugee program might have, if any, on those who qualify for Special Immigrant Visas for assisting the U.S. military. Under the order, the Department of Homeland Security can clear people on a case-by-case basis.
“These are people that we want to support, and I’m just saying to them, ‘I’ve got your back. I will do as much as I can and get the message out,’” said Ellen Smith, founder and executive director of Keeping Our Promise.
Smith was a guest Wednesday on “Connections with Evan Dawson.” She has helped hundreds of Afghan men and women make it to the Rochester region after they served with American soldiers on the battlefield.
Whether they did or not, though, the outlook for many immigrants is similar.
“One thing I can just say, right now, like every immigrant, regardless of their status — refugees, legal or not, or even citizens — fearful,” Bashir said. “It is a very uncertain time until things are settled down and for sure they know that they are completely safe. The fear is out there. We are getting questions and calls from legal immigrants and refugees.”
Refugees are, he clarified, legal immigrants.
On average, officials said, they have spent a decade in refugee camps going through the process for resettlement to the United States, and undergoing extensive vetting made even more stringent during Trump’s first term.
While the number of refugees is steadily increasing worldwide, the politics of Washington have led to an up-and-down flow of people being admitted to the United States. And that makes it hard for local resettlement programs to manage staffing and budgets that historically are based on the number of arrivals. Nationally, numbers have yo-yoed from more than 100,000 down to 18,000 and back up as the White House moved from Democratic to Republican to Democratic control.
While the change in direction caught program officials by surprise eight years ago, Bashir said they were prepared this time. Locally, his department has sought out alternate funding to help existing refugees, bolstering programming in cultural orientation, English language learning, job training.
“And we are part of a big agency,” Bashir said, “so we have the commitment from our leadership, from the senior executive team, to move staff to other programs that are not affected by policy change. So we are, this time, more prepared, more aware of what was coming.”
Includes reporting by Connections host Evan Dawson.