News that President Donald Trump signed an executive order suspending the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program has left people involved with the program, including those who helped American troops in Afghanistan, angry, anxious and puzzled. Appaswamy “Vino” Pajanor, CEO of Catholic Charities Diocese of San Diego, said the executive order was immediately felt at the nonprofit’s refugees services, which last year found homes for more than 100 people from Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. A family from Ghana were among the thousands of refugees who had been resettled in the United States through a program run by Catholic Charities. Following the Trump administration’s suspension of a federal refugee program, the local nonprofit has received no new people in its program. (San Diego Diocese Catholic Charities) “We were expecting the new administration to come in and change the border policy, but we didn’t expect it to happen so drastically overnight,” he said. The nonprofit has been working with the state since 2021, the year a surge of asylum seekers began appearing on the border. Under the agreement with the state, Catholic Charities received people who were pending asylum, had documents to travel and had been processed and released by the Department of Homeland Security. On an average day, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) would send 200 or 300 people to stay at the nonprofit’s 500-bed facility in San Diego or its 300-bed facility in El Cajon. This week, they did not receive a single person. “The CBP said they have federal policy change and that they’re not going to release any more of those asylum seekers,” Pajanor said, adding that he is in the dark about whether the people they expected to receive had returned to Mexico or are still at the border. “We are monitoring the situation, so we have to get more clarification of whether the federal government or Border Patrol are going to process those individuals or not,” he said. Shawn VanDiver sits at his home in Clairemont on Thursday, Oct. 6, 2022.(Photo by Sandy Huffaker / For The San Diego Union-Tribune) At the San Diego-based national nonprofit #AfghanEvac, President and Board Chair Shawn VanDiver called the decision a betrayal of the people who had helped American troops in Afghanistan and whose lives now are in danger because of it. “They are banning thousands of individuals who stood shoulder to shoulder with American service members, including many of active-duty service members’ families,” VanDiver said. #AfghanEvac, a coalition of more than 250 organizations that has worked with the State Department to relocate eligible Afghans who served alongside U.S. service members in Afghanistan, sent 750 letters to Trump before the inauguration urging the administration to exempt Afghan allies from the suspension. “It’s a betrayal of all those who risked everything for America,” VanDiver said. Since 2021, the nonprofit has helped bring about 193,000 Afghan refugees to the United States, with a few thousand resettling in San Diego County. VanDiver said some American service members have family members in Afghanistan whose lives may be in danger. One service member’s family was hunted down and killed last month, he said. According to #AfghanEvac, between 10,000 and 15,000 people across Afghanistan, Pakistan and other nations have been vetted and were ready or nearly ready to travel when the executive order was signed. At least 200 U.S. military families are awaiting reunification with Afghan allies, according to the nonprofit. In Murrieta, Omid Shirzad drives an Uber and sends whatever money he can to his parents and two brothers back in Afghanistan. “They’re just hopeless right now,” he said. “They have been waiting many years for a chance to survive.” Shirzad, who plans to move to La Mesa this month, came to the United States three years ago on a Special Immigrant Visa. His father, who was a general in the Afghanistan army and served with American troops, had a Priority One Visa under the State Department’s U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. His father, mother and two brothers were prepared to fly out of Afghanistan, but their visas have been canceled, Shirzad said. Life for his family has been especially hard since the Taliban returned to Afghanistan. Although both his brothers are highly educated, Shirzad said employers won’t hire them because of their father’s past work with U.S. troops. “They don’t know what will happen to them,” Shirzad said. “They are sleeping with fear every night.” James Seddon, a 21-year Navy veteran who served in Afghanistan, works with #AfghanEvac and has personally helped relocate Afghan allies, including a female attorney who had prosecuted Taliban members for various crimes and is now working in the United States. “There’s dismay,” he said. “There’s anger. There’s puzzlement, and of course all these factors play into a sense of moral injury. As veterans, you put a lot on the line to serve the country, and you expect your country to do the right thing.” The suspension of the federal refugee program includes an exception for refugees whose entry to the U.S. is in the national interest. “I will say as a veteran that keeping faith with our wartime allies is in our national security interest,” Seddon said. “If there is another war and if we want to find faithful allies in that next war, we have to take care of the ones from Afghanistan.” Seddon also said there is a good chance that excluding Afghan allies from the suspension was an oversight that will be corrected soon. In El Cajon, Chaldean Community Council founder and Iraq immigrant Noori Barka said the action could affect Iraqis who hope to come to the United States, but he was not overly concerned because he believes the rules will change and Trump is more focused on illegal migration from the border. Chaldean Community Council founder Noori Barka. “For me, politics is all about talking, negotiating and approaching and giving your views,” he said. “And I believe we can make things happen if we approach it the right way. We’re going to fight for the right of our people who are eligible to come through the asylum process” Still, Barka said some people in the community are concerned because there are many refugees who left Iraq for Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey and are waiting for visas. Barka said he was not surprised by Trump’s order and supports the president. He attended some inauguration activities in Washington, D.C., and even met with Trump’s legal counsel, Alina Habba, who is Iraqi-American. “We discussed how can we work together to help our community, and she was very positive,” he said. The Chaldean Community Council holds regular meetings with representatives from the offices of Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-San Diego, and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Bonsall, and local residents with family members who are trying to immigrate as refugees. Only about one family a month arrives as refugees with help from the council, and Barka said the process can take several years, so he sees the suspension of the federal program as a temporary delay. Whether his optimism will play out anytime soon is unclear, as the executive order did not have a timeline, but rather is indefinite. The International Rescue Committee helped relocate 497 refugees in San Diego County last fiscal year and this week issued a statement urging the administration “to undertake a prompt, evidence-based assessment, required under the order, to resume this vital program.” “America has always been a beacon for those seeking haven and this decision is a backward step for refugees and for America,” IRC President and CEO David Miliband said.