Under Federal law, a refugee is a person who is unable to go back to their country of origin because they are being persecuted for their gender, ethnicity, political opinion, or belonging to a certain group. When the United States grants refugee status, that person may live and work here legally.
President Elect Donald Trump’s promise to overhaul America’s immigration policies has many in the Idaho refugee population wondering what this means for their community.
Slobodanka Hodzic is the director for the Agency for New Americans, a local nonprofit helping refugees settle when they first arrive in Idaho. She said since the election, people they serve have reached out asking if they would be asked to leave the country under a Trump presidency.
“Are they going to be asked to leave the country? They have nowhere to go,” she said. “There is lots of anxieties and worries about their family members that are in the process. Are they going to be able to come?”
Trump said he’d deport a million undocumented migrants in the first year of his second term, but that would not apply to refugees who are legally in the U.S.
Hodzic said refugees in Idaho are also concerned about what a Trump presidency means for their loved ones trying to join them in the U.S. In 2017, the Trump administration temporarily banned refugees from six Muslim countries from entering the country.
“We still have some clients that they've been in process to come from four years ago,” she said, adding the agency is focusing on informing people of their rights as best they can.
“There is lots of misinformation and just fear and anxiety in the population. We are trying to be transparent as much as we can, but we still don't know a lot,” Hodzic said. "There are a lot of unknowns."
The Idaho Office for Refugees reports the state welcomed more than 1,100 refugees in 2024, the large majority coming from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ukraine and Afghanistan.
