Families promised a chance to reunite remain separated by Trump’s refugee policy
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AURORA, Colo. — Legesse Beyene Abraha waited 15 years to reunite with his wife and two children. In 2010, he last kissed his son, then 8, and daughter, then 3, in the wee hours of the morning while they were sleeping at home in Eritrea’s capital city of Asmara.
Abraha’s life was in danger after speaking out against the Eritrean government, so he fled the country, leaving his family behind. Abraha, who was 51 at the time, said traveling with his family would have put them in danger; he figured they’d be reunited before too long.
That was 15 years ago.
This year, on February 6 at 9:45pm, Abraha, now an American citizen, would finally be able to reunite with his family at Denver International Airport. The family was approved to live in the U.S. on refugee status, a designation that placed them on a path to become legal permanent residents and, if they complete the process, become American citizens, as he had done.
“The day I found out they were coming, I was on the phone talking with them all night,” Abraha said. “I couldn’t sleep, I was so happy.”
But that day — at least the way he imagined it — never came. Abraha, like so many other former refugees living in the U.S. who were promised reunification with their loved ones by the American government, suddenly faced an unthinkable reality: the best day of their lives would not materialize.
The day of his inauguration, President Donald Trump’s administration announced it was suspending the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, saying continued admission compromised the “availability of resources for Americans,” and “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.” Per that order, 128,000 people who were conditionally approved to come to the U.S. as refugees for fiscal year 2025 would no longer have that opportunity.
In Colorado, 110 people were assured to come and resettle through Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains, one of the state’s resettlement agencies. Those individuals, some of whom already had flight tickets booked, would no longer be able to, according to Jaime Koehler Blanchard, program director of refugee and asylee programs at the nonprofit.
Four days after the Inauguration, the Trump administration issued a stop-work order, suspending all payments to refugee resettlement agencies. Those payments typically cover the first 90 days of resettlement for new refugees, including food and rental assistance, as well as administrative costs for agencies. Resettlement organizations reliant on that money to serve recently arrived refugees — those who came shortly before January 20 — would have to find different sources of funding.
With the current suspension of refugees and looming questions about the future of the program under President Trump, former refugees like Abraha who have waited years to reunite with their families are now left in limbo.
“I am always checking my mail and listening to the news to see if I can hear any good updates about bringing my children here,” Abraha said.
“Nothing new to report now,” he said.
Refugee resettlement agencies are struggling to absorb the costs for their current clients without federal funding.
“We worry about our clients, we worry about our work, and we worry about our jobs,” said Koehler Blanchard of Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains (LFSRM).
Koehler Blanchard said it’s common for families in conflict-ridden countries to split apart.
“One part of a family ends up in one refugee camp and another part of the family ends up in another refugee camp, and so they get resettled separately,” she said.
Koehler Blanchard said her agency has been working with several clients, in addition to Abraha, whose family members were supposed to arrive this January and February, including a few women who were waiting to bring their parents over from Afghanistan.
“They were approved for resettlement,” she said. “The U.S. actually flew them to Qatar in anticipation of their imminent resettlement. I don’t know what’s going to happen to them now.”
One of Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains staff members was in the process of sponsoring her Iraqi brother through the Welcome Corps, a program that allowed Americans and permanent residents to directly sponsor refugees for resettlement. The Trump administration terminated that program in February. The staff member can no longer help bring her brother to the U.S.
“Now, in addition to worrying about her own job, she has to worry about her brother,” said Koehler Blanchard.
In February and March, LFSRM laid off several employees from its 60-something-person refugee resettlement division. The organization did not wish to divulge the number of workers it let go, but said the number was “significant.”
They are now relying further on private donations, but haven’t received as many donations or volunteers to fill in the gaps as they had during the first Trump administration, Koehler Blanchard said.
“We've seen a small uptick, but it hasn't been the huge spike in support that we saw in 2017,” she said.
While no new refugees have arrived since mid-January of this year, the resettlement agencies still have their work cut out for them.
LFSRM said it worked to secure housing and pay down rent in full for refugees who arrived just before Trump’s inauguration in January in anticipation that their funding could change.
But the organization, like Jewish Family Service of Colorado, said reimbursements owed from the government, from well before the stop-work order, have been slow to come.
Linda Foster, president and CEO of Jewish Family Service of Colorado said her organization ordinarily receives reimbursements from the federal government — through their parent organization the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) — within a few weeks.
Jewish Family Service (JFS) didn’t receive payments for services they covered from October 2024 to January 2025 until mid-April, and they’re still waiting for the final $35,000.
JFS resettled 137 refugees to Colorado in the three months before Trump took office, more than they typically do in such a short time period. The number amounted to 70% of the number of people they planned to resettle for an entire 12-month period.
“Our team said without hesitation, ‘we need to do this.’ We mobilized into full force,” Foster said.
“Those 137 refugees that we're resettling right now came into the country with the understanding and with the promise that they would have cash assistance to support them until they became self-sufficient. Otherwise they could end up on the streets,” said Foster.
JFS has increased fundraising from private donors and has been getting extra financial help from the state-run Colorado Refugee Services Program to help pay for staff.
Some employers have also stepped up, Foster said, including Hyatt and Los Dos Potrillos, a chain of Colorado Mexican restaurants, who hired seven refugees through Jewish Family Service in one week.
Refugee resettlement reaches historic lows under Trump
In fiscal year 2023, Colorado’s refugees came primarily from four countries: Afghanistan, Ukraine, Cuba and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The United States defines a refugee as a person who has fled his or her country to escape war or persecution and can prove it.
Every year since the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980, the president, in consultation with Congress, decides how many refugees to admit and from which regions of the world. The ceiling was the highest in the early 1980s and again in the early 1990s.
During President Donald Trump’s first administration, the number of refugees allowed in the country dipped to the lowest levels in the history of the program, to a total of 18,000 in 2020.
It’s unclear how many refugees — if any — the Trump administration will welcome this year. The current number stands at zero.
But even for those already here, it hasn’t been smooth sailing — particularly since January.
Refugees are more scared than usual, said Koehler Blanchard.
“They hear a lot of rumors and are worried they could be swept up in some sort of [deportation] operation,” she said. “We had people calling us worried about sending their kids to school.”
Jewish Family Service said they have given all their clients information about their rights in their native languages.
“We have told them to carry their documentation with them at all times and keep it safe,” said Foster.
While the likelihood of refugees getting deported is unlikely, it’s not impossible.
Over the past few months, the Trump administration has expanded its focus beyond illegal immigration and gone after some refugees, Green Card holders (which refugees can apply for one year after their arrival) and others with legal visas.
Recently, the Department of Homeland Security sent letters to Afghan refugees in Iowa, notifying them they must leave the U.S. immediately, Axios reported. Similar notices have been reported in Utah and North Carolina.
Most Green Card holders who have been deported or detained so far appear to have some sort of offense on their record, NPR reported.
"Green card holders who have not broken any U.S. laws, committed application fraud, or failed to apply for a re-entry permit after a long period of travel have nothing to fear about entering and exiting the country,” said Customs and Border Protection Assistant Commissioner Hilton Beckham in a statement to NPR.
Escaping a repressive regime
Rocky Mountain PBS spoke with Abraha on a bench outside his apartment complex in Aurora, a month and a half after he found out he wouldn’t be welcoming his family anytime soon.
His English isn’t perfect, so a translator helped translate between Tigrinya, the language of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia, and English.
Abraha, now an American citizen, was once himself a refugee. He said he escaped Eritrea after his friends told him the government was surveilling him.
“We don’t want to see anything bad happen to you. You might as well leave while you can,” he recalls his friends telling him one day at his car mechanic shop, where he worked for many years. Abraha had been critical of Eritrea’s government and was friends with journalists, making him a target on two accounts.
Eritrea’s government is considered to be among the most repressive in the world, with widespread forced labor and conscription, restricted free speech and punishment for the families of those who have deserted the country, according to Human Rights Watch.
The president of Eritrea, Isaias Afwerki, has been in power since 1993, and the country has no legislature, judicial branch or media outlets and has often been dubbed the “North Korea of Africa.”
Abraha escaped and took refuge in nearby Ethiopia, the most popular route for displaced Eritreans, and eventually made his way to the capital, Addis Ababa.
In 2016, heart complications and a stroke landed him in a local hospital, but they were ill-equipped to treat him. The UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, arranged for him to move to the U.S. for better medical treatment, Abraha said. He had a sister living in Aurora and settled nearby, eventually becoming a legal permanent resident and, finally, an American citizen.
Abraha applied to bring his family in as refugees to the U.S. as soon as he arrived in Colorado in 2017.
The family fled Eritrea in 2018 for Ethiopia during a brief period of time when the border between the two countries reopened. The family left right after their son, Mesmer, was finishing 10th grade and would have been forced, like all kids his age, to end his schooling and enter a military camp. Abraha said the family had to sneak out of the country because of that — and because his wife, Azeb, who was a nurse at a children’s hospital, was forbidden from leaving Eritrea like other doctors and nurses.
Mesmer, who is now 23, studies information technology and has been trying to get a job in Addis Ababa, but it’s been difficult — 79% of Eritrean refugees are unemployed.
Abraha’s 18-year-old daughter, Tmnit, was attending 8th grade in Ethiopia earlier this year. The grade is several years below where she should otherwise be as a result of missing school while the family lived in refugee camps and moved frequently. When his daughter learned she was moving to the U.S., she quit school and now can’t return for the rest of the year, Abraha said.
His wife, Azeb, like her son, hasn’t been able to find a job in Addis Ababa, so for now mom and daughter stay home, said Abraha. Tmnit just started taking guitar lessons at a music school, per Abraha’s advice, to avoid spending all her days at the apartment.
Abraha has been sending his family $350 each month from his social security checks to help support them.
As an American citizen, Abraha could go to Ethiopia to visit them, but he is at high risk for brain aneurysm rupture, so flying is too dangerous. Visiting is also risky — he could be forcibly sent back to Eritrea and sent to prison, something that’s been documented by the Ethiopian government.
With his health and high blood pressure, he can no longer work as a car mechanic.
Living alone, under precarious health conditions and without his family all these years has been tough, he said, and he attempted suicide three years ago.
“Among everything on this earth, the worst is to separate from your own children,” he said.
Abraha said the day he found out his family could no longer enter the U.S., his blood pressure reached 220 — almost the same number it was at when he had his stroke in 2016.
During the Rocky Mountain PBS interview, he stood up and walked around, something he said he must do for his health.
On April 11, a federal judge ordered refugee admissions be resumed for those who had been approved to enter the U.S. before January 20. However, the Trump administration has so far defied the order, and as of April 23, the administration had still not resumed the program.
Abraha doesn’t expect he’ll see his family anytime soon. He said LFSRM told him it could be another year to four years until his family arrives.
"My only hope is to see my children before I die," he said. "Nothing else."
Type of story: News
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
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