LEWISTON — Agencies working to resettle immigrant and refugee families across the state were told late last week that they will no longer be reimbursed for aid provided to families, which includes short-term housing and food assistance.

The memo from the State Department has organizations scrambling to support new Mainers who arrived in the country legally, but are now left without the 90-day support system designed to help get people on their feet in a new community.

Rilwan Osman, director of Maine Immigrant and Refugee Services in Lewiston, said his organization is scrambling to find options for more than 100 individuals who are still within the 90-day window, feeling a “moral responsibility” to help families with no other support.

He said Tuesday that he’s also faced with laying off staff at MEIRS who work with resettled families.

Osman said the memo from the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration said funding for the program had been suspended as of Jan. 24, impacting hundreds of agencies across the country. According to a CNN article on Friday, more than 30,000 refugees have arrived in the United States since Oct. 1, and many would still be within the three-month window of receiving benefits and services.

President Trump’s executive order halting new arrivals of refugees had already been in place earlier last week, but the State Department memo meant families already in Maine — arriving in December and January — would be without support at a critical time.

“It has a huge, huge impact on families who just arrived this month,” Osman said. “They don’t know anything or anyone except for the resettlement agencies like us.”

Osman said they have been providing assistance to 110 individuals still within the 90-day window, with 97 in temporary housing.

“They came here legally, have all the proper documentation, and we cannot even provide them with the basic services in order for them to be successful,” he said.

Lisa Day, left, and Bonnie Titcomb Lewis hang donated clothes at Maine Immigrant & Refugee Services in Lewiston in 2022. The organization helps immigrants and refugees that have relocated to the Lewiston area. Daryn Slover/Sun Journal file

When reached Tuesday, Lewiston Mayor Carl Sheline called the issue “a manufactured crisis with real life consequences.”

“Our new neighbors need support — the support they were promised — to successfully integrate into the community,” he said.

In Portland, Inza Ouattara, refugee coordinator for the Office of Maine Refugee Services, said Tuesday that “it’s a difficult situation” for the three resettlement agencies his office works with, which includes MEIRS.

“That funding is their livelihood because it allows them to get housing and provides case management,” he said. “I can imagine how difficult it is, and it leaves refugees who are already in temporary housing in limbo.”

The program that MEIRS and others have been working under also helps families find jobs and enroll children in schools. For now, Ouattara said his office is still providing the resettlement agencies with funding that helps cover employment services and medical screening for refugees.

But, he said, “all over the nation” people are looking for alternative funding sources — even philanthropic foundations — to make up for the loss.

At the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine, which operates a resettlement program, posted a statement that staff is “still working through the implications” of the president’s executive order last week regarding the refugee program, as well as the State Department communication.

The JCA program was approved to resettle 225 refugees this fiscal year, and 101 were resettled before the orders came through, the organization said.

JCA said the “unprecedented orders could potentially lead to a complete shutdown of refugee operations, including the provision of services for refugees who are already here.”

In the statement, Inna Cherednichenko, preferred communities program manager at the JCA, said, “the actions being taken by the government toward refugees are inhumane.”

“Even if funding was intended to be discontinued, it should have been phased out gradually to allow clients and agencies time to prepare. Since it was done abruptly, it will likely lead to serious consequences for everyone involved.”