CV NEWS FEED // The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) reportedly laid off approximately a third of its migrant and refugee services (MRS) staff Friday in the wake of the Trump administration’s freeze of federal funding.
“The Executive Orders recently issued by the U.S president are causing confusion … for the USCCB regarding cooperative agreements for both Refugee Resettlement Programs and our Children Services, which help care for unaccompanied children,” stated a Friday an internal USCCB memo to bishops first obtained by The Pillar.
To “the best of my knowledge,” the memo from USCCB General Secretary Fr. Michael Fuller continued, federally contracted refugee resettlement organizations have not “received reimbursements for outstanding invoices related to the programs we administer” since President Donald Trump took office.
“Currently, we are awaiting reimbursement for services completed in December, an amount close to $20 million,” Fuller added. “Invoices for services completed in January are now arriving, which means that we will be submitting millions more dollars of reimbursement requests.”
Due to the reimbursement delays, “we will be forced to issue layoff notices to 50 individuals, approximately one-third of the total MRS staff at this time,” the memo explained.
The news comes shortly after CatholicVote reported that Catholic Relief Services (CRS) was cutting its workforce by nearly 50% after the Trump administration’s freeze on funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
CRS President and CEO Sean Callahan said in an internal email obtained by the National Catholic Reporter: “We anticipate that we will be a much smaller overall organization by the end of this fiscal year.”
“Callahan said that the organization has already initiated layoffs and is closing programs that depended on USAID funding, which represented nearly half of CRS’ $1.5 billion budget,” CatholicVote reported.
CRS “was the largest recipient of funds from USAID, receiving $4.6 billion from fiscal year 2013 to 2022,” CatholicVote also reported.
As OSV News reported Friday, the USCCB website “states that its Migration and Refugee Services ‘is the largest refugee resettlement agency in the world,’ and that in partnership with its affiliates, it resettles approximately 18% of the refugees that arrive in the U.S. each year.”