Trump Breaks our Promise to Legal Refugees

Iowa State Senator Sarah Trone Garriott asks Iowa Legislators to Provide Humanitarian Aid

Feb 13, 2025

A press release I received from Iowa State Senator Sarah Trone Garriott the other day caught my eye:

Iowa State Senator Asks for Emergency Funds to Aid Refugee Resettlement

Des Moines — Iowa State Sen. Sarah Trone Garriott filed legislation seeking emergency state funding to enable refugee resettlement operations in Iowa. She has released the following statement.

“What value do we place on our word?” Sen. Trone Garriott (D-Waukee) asked. “The United States made a commitment to provide 90 days of resettlement support for each refugee we received, but that commitment has been broken.”

“Iowans honor their word, even if our leaders in Washington, D.C. don’t,” Sen. Trone Garriott said.

Sen. Trone Garriott’s bill, as yet unnumbered, would appropriate $2.5 million from the state’s general fund to the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to distribute to nonprofit agencies assisting in refugee resettlement operations in Iowa.

“There are 891 refugees in Iowa, including 445 children, who have had the rug pulled out from under them and been left with nothing,” Trone Garriott said. “No guidance, no help. Nothing. Iowans are better than that.”

“These are people who have already gone through an extensive vetting process and have legal status,” Trone Garriott said. “They come here with nothing but hope and our promise of a better life. We have to step up now.”

I don’t know about you, but this press release hit me hard. Of course, we have to help these refugees who have gone through so much and who seek safety and a better life here. That our government made a promise that is now being cruelly broken by the Trump administration pissed me off. It’s an astonishing moral failure that we should be ashamed of. That’s not who we are as Americans.

I had to learn more, and the Senator agreed to an interview. Below is a transcript, followed by a video of the interview. The transcript has been lightly edited, and Senator Trone Garriott’s answers are in bold. Not to spoil the interview, but she shares a couple of surprises, to me anyway, about how the views of some of her Republican colleagues in the Senate betray our values. Here’s the interview:

Well, Senator, you just came from the Capital after a tour for Girl Scouts, that must have been fun.

So, I have a lot of people reach out and want to come visit the capital and I like to show people behind the scenes things because it's their building, but there's something that happens when people are in the building, they start thinking about what happens there and I really want to help more people think about state government because it impacts our lives and too many folks have no idea who's representing them.

Well, I want to get to a bill you've recently introduced about refugee settlement. And I'm interested in this because I just think it's the right thing to do, to try to help people that were invited over, but also that some friends of mine were ready to host somebody coming over from Afghanistan, I believe, and then it all fell apart. Can you tell us what the big picture is and then what your bill is specifically trying to do?

Yeah, so what happens with refugees is they are a legal class of immigrants who are thoroughly vetted, probably the most vetted people in the world. It can take years to get through the process to become a refugee. And then the United States when they accept refugees, they agree to commit to 90 days of support. So that's it, just the first 90 days and then after that they're on their own. And the 90 days of support is really minimal.

So it's some basic needs assistance about $18 a day and it provides support for staffing to help people get enrolled in school and jobs, learn English, because folks are coming with very little and they don't have the language skills and it's an entirely new place to live and they've gone through some really traumatic things. So it's a huge transition for folks.

And last week we found out that refugee resettlement groups were cut off. So there was a Trump executive order that suspended all federal aid and within that federal aid was all the support for the refugees who are currently here in their 90 days. So the money that was promised was cut off immediately. And so refugee resettlement programs have been laying off staff.

They've been scrambling to pull resources from other places to cover the basic needs piece, to try to keep their staff on board. It's really a moment of crisis. It's a humanitarian crisis that our federal government has created. And so I filed a bill for emergency funding. I feel that, you know, if the federal government won't keep its word, we should.

Okay, and what's that bill number?

That bill is Senate file 223 and it has been assigned to the appropriations committee.

Okay, and so tell me what kind of feedback are you getting on this both from Democrats and Republicans?

So, Democrats have been largely supportive. We all have the issues that are really close to our hearts and for me it's the refugee community.

I've spent a lot of time with refugee and immigrant communities in our metro area and so I care about these folks. I've heard their stories. I know how hard they work to make a life here in Iowa and the tremendous challenges that they've overcome to get here. And so, for me, it's something that I keep talking about and been focusing on.

As I talk to my Republican colleagues, I think there's a lot of misperceptions, just a lack of understanding of what a refugee is. So, I've been trying to educate my Republican colleagues that yes, these are legal immigrants. They didn't just show up here. We brought them here.

It was a very defined process, thorough vetting, refugees are probably the most vetted people in the world and this is what we committed to do and now we're taking away our our promise and really ripping the rug out from underneath the most vulnerable people.

Um, the way it works though, in the Senate especially is that Republicans will not sign on a Democrat's bill. They'll be punished if they do and they will not support moving forward a Democrat's bill.

And so I've been asking them to consider, you know, using other avenues to encourage our governor, the Department of Health and Human Services to provide some emergency funding because it's very necessary, but um, you know it's just kind of hard to get folks to stand up for this group of people.

Well, educating what a refugee is, that’s fine. I mean to do that is fine if people don't know. That's part of the process. But we have, as you noted in your press release, we have 891 people, 445 of them are children that the federal government has left out to hang.

Yeah.

And it's more important for the Republicans not to sign on to a Democratic bill than to do the right moral thing and help these people?

You know, yeah, you learn really quick what's important to people. I had a Republican colleague yesterday, get very angry with me because I made some comments on the floor, really taking our governor to task for not standing up for the Lutheran service organizations that folks associated with the president's administration are making these baseless and harmful accusations against.

Um and he came up to me and said, "I'm not going to help you because you criticized my governor. I won't help these people.”

It's hard for me to believe that this person was going to help anyway, but if you are a good person, you want to help because the people need help.

It's cruel. It's cruel and it's petty.

Yeah. And you know, for a lot of folks, it's just not on their radar. And so whenever I've posted and shared about this issue, I get a lot of comments about illegal immigrants. And there's, you know, so much misunderstanding and so much bias against folks who are going through the immigration process. And there are legal immigration processes and they're very complicated and they're very challenging.

And refugee status is a legitimate status as a legal immigrant and I feel like I have to just keep saying that over and over again. We have committed to resettle these people and we committed to help them for 90 days. And 90 days is a very short period of time to start a completely new life when you've been through the worst. And $18 a day is not enough.

And so these resettlement agencies do a lot of fundraising and they work with a lot of volunteers and they pull it together all these other resources to make better support because $18 a day for basic needs does not cut it. So all of these folks were already doing way more than they should have had to do on their own and now they're really struggling without this federal assistance.

Well, what's hard for me to understand is I've been on almost every factory floor in three counties and most of those, you know, they're good jobs, they're well-paying jobs and they're really needing workers. This would seem to be an investment in these legal refugees, and some of the training happens really quick. I mean, it's welding, it's manufacturing, it's machine work, it's driving forklifts, and they're begging for people. And so using this small investment to help these refugees until they get their feet on the ground and are tax paying, it's just like a win-win for Iowa's economy, the businesses, the people, for all of us, and it's and the Republicans won't vote for it simply because it's a Democratic bill?

That's just the reality of how our legislative process works when there's such an imbalance of power. Sometimes legislators will steal your ideas and I'm totally fine with that. Take it, take credit, I don't care. I just want good things to happen. Um, but in part I filed this legislation to raise the issue.

To make it clear that it's needed, um to make sure that we have some kind of conversation about it to put it on the record as saying, you know, this is a need that I'm hearing from Iowans and I am doing what I can to act. You know, so Health and Human Services has met with refugees and refugee resettlement organizations, but they haven't promised anything. They haven't offered any support. And so these folks keep meeting with HHS asking for the assistance of the governor's administration and they can't get anything from them.

It's my hope that with public pressure, with a lot of encouragement, with a lot of people talking about the issue, we can get the governor to act. We've got to bring one of that one of those, you know, this is an issue that needs to come to the top.

And so what can we do, write the governor, write our legislators, talk with them, go to town halls if they have them. Anything else that you can think of?

So, I think it's really important that if you have any connections with businesses that have hired refugees, that they speak out. I have talked to every company that does meat processing in the state of Iowa and told them, "Look, this is happening and it's going to impact your businesses because a lot of them hire refugees when they first arrive in the country." I think it's important that the business community reach out because workforce is an issue here in Iowa and we know that refugees and immigrants who have settled here in Iowa contribute to our community.

They've become a valuable part of our communities. They start their own businesses. They create, you know, economic power here in our state. They're good neighbors. And so, you know, anyone who has that experience should be speaking out to the governor's office. And I recommend phone calls because, um it's harder to ignore a phone call.

The folks who answer, of course remember, this is their job, be nice to them, but tell the story and ask what is the Governor doing to help refugees right now. Because it's about two and a half million dollars that our state is missing out on in economic investment from the federal government. Every dollar of refugee resettlement money generates $10 of economic benefit.

So, I mean it's a huge loss for our state and it's just for this number of refugees for these 90 days. There were others that were supposed to come. The door's been slammed shut on them. But we need to do something for the people who are here right now, who are counting on us.

Anything I didn't know enough to ask or didn't think of that you'd like to share?

You know, reaching out to your legislators is really important and letting them know what you think. Even if your legislator agrees with you and you assume they do, let them know it’s an important issue for you. Even if you assume that they do not agree with you, they should be hearing from you too. And refugees matter to all parts of the state. There are 891 folks all across the state of Iowa, and you know, our legislators need to hear those stories. If you've had any connections with refugees or resettlement in the past, reach out and share your story.

And, please let your neighbors know that there are legal immigration processes, refugees are one of those and it's a really important thing that we do to give these folks an opportunity for a new life, but they give so much more back to Iowa by being part of our community.

Well, thank you so much, Senator.

Thank you so much, Bob.

Here is the video:

On Monday morning I received a press release from the Governor’s Office that she was holding a press conference later that morning about her new state of Iowa DOGE program. I saw the press release, and recognized I had just enough time to get to the press conference an hour away if I left at that moment.

Of course, I had to fiddle around and find my keys, pack my computer, etc., and so I arrived for the press conference five minutes late and the door was locked.

Standing outside of the doorway were these fine people above. They were there to talk to Governor Reynolds about supporting refugee relief as proposed by Senator Trone Garriott, also a Lutheran minister, and possibly other issues.

It turns out that they were also there to support Lutheran Services in Iowa after a conspiracy theory amplified by Elon Musk called it a “money laundering operation” and Governor Reynolds declined to deny the unfounded allegations at a congressional hearing. Zachary Oren Smith of the Iowa Starting Line has the story here.

I took their photo because I always take photos, but I don’t remember any names because my brain is leaky, and I didn’t think to write them down. I never know what’s going to make a story. The woman on the left is a Trone Garriott staffer, and the four in the middle are Lutheran clergy. I’m not sure about the guy on the right, but I suspect he is in this context a “stealth” Lutheran.

It’s probably good to have a few regular and “stealth” Lutherans around, especially in Republican-led legislative bodies to try to hold them accountable.

After a little small talk, I told them that I was raised Lutheran, but didn’t go to church anymore, but I still remember my Sunday School lessons, and they almost cheered! I guess that makes me a “stealth” Lutheran too.

Just think what would have happened if I told someone in the evangelical right like the Prosperity Gospel grifters Donald Trump surrounds himself with that I didn’t go to church anymore—they likely would have scolded me and picked my pocket.

After a backlash, Governor Reynolds later “clarified,” saying that Lutheran Services in Iowa “absolutely” does not launder money and that her remarks were “taken out of context.”

Please support organizations like Lutheran Services in Iowa and other organizations that help refugees, and if you are so inclined, contact your legislators and ask them to support Senator Trone Garriott’s efforts to render aid to refugees, and to minimize the cruelty of President Trump’s broken promise.

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