Trump refugee order forces World Relief to close five offices, lays off 140

(Reuters/Patrick T. Fallon)People protest against U.S. President Donald Trump's travel ban on Muslim majority countries at the International terminal at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) in Los Angeles, California, U.S., January 28, 2017.

World Relief, the evangelical-backed development agency announced it will shut down five offices and lay off around 140 staffers as "a direct result of the recent decision by the Trump Administration" to reduce the number of refugee admissions in the United States.

World Relief is one of the nine U.S. resettlement agencies that work with the U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program. Under the program, the nine humanitarian organizations receive government grants to cover the costs of resettling new refugees. Based on its latest tax filing, World Relief received $42 million from the federal government, representing 75 percent of its $62 million revenue in 2015.

World Relief expects government funding to reduce drastically after President Donald Trump signed on Jan. 27 an executive order titled "Protection of the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States" which reduces the cap on refugee admissions from 110,000 to 50,000.

"I hereby proclaim that the entry of more than 50,000 refugees in fiscal year 2017 would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, and thus suspend any such entry until such time as I determine that additional admissions would be in the national interest," Trump said in Sec. 5 (d) of said EO.

"[The EO] will impact all nine resettlement agencies, so the infrastructure for refugee resettlement in our country — built over decades, at least since the Refugee Act of 1980 — could be decimated," said Matthew Soerens, U.S. director of church mobilization for World Relief, according to the The Washington Post.

The offices to be closed down are those in Boise, Idaho; Columbus, Ohio; Miami; Nashville; and Glen Burnie, Md. "This represents a loss of more than 140 jobs — which by itself is deeply troubling — but also decades of organizational expertise and invaluable capacity to serve the world's most vulnerable people," chief executive Tim Breene said in the statement released by World Relief.

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