Joanna Krause is focused on resettling and supporting families arriving in Arkansas as refugees.
“The definition of a refugee is someone who was forced to flee their home and they have come to the United States through legal channels,” Krause told Little Rock Public Radio. “Refugees are the most vetted group of immigrants who come to the United States.”
Krause is the executive director of Canopy Northwest Arkansas, one of only two refugee resettlement agencies in the state. Their work starts before people even arrive in the U.S. – Canopy finds an apartment, furnishes it, and meets new arrivals at the airport. They help them enroll their children in school, sign up for English language classes, and find a job; basically, start building a new life in a new country.
Any refugee coming into the U.S. through the United Nations, the State Department, or the national nonprofit Global Refuge can apply for services at Canopy. According to Krause, they’ve resettled people from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, Syria, Venezuela, Vietnam, and more.
“So really places that people have had to flee their home” Krause said. “Some individuals we have welcomed have been in refugee camps for 20 years or longer.”
The standard resettlement program lasts 90 days, but Canopy also supports refugees under their “long welcome” program. That gives people extra support while they wait the required five years to apply for citizenship.
Krause said one of the best parts of the job is watching naturalization ceremonies, where people become legal U.S. citizens after years of being displaced.
So Krause is trying to stay optimistic, but she is concerned about President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House – and what his policies will mean for her organization.
“We don’t ever want to see resettlement have a pause, because we know that just keeps people who may have been in refugee camps for years and years and years waiting longer,” she said.
Canopy opened in 2016, just a few months before Trump’s first term. One of his first executive orders was to ban people from seven Muslim-majority countries from traveling into the United States. He also lowered the cap for the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. multiple times throughout his presidency.
Krause said those orders devastated the country’s resettlement infrastructure.
“Offices across the country were forced to close because if some of these local resettlement agencies, nonprofits exist primarily to welcome new arrivals into the community and then there aren’t new arrivals, then there’s no resources and frankly there’s not as much work to be done.”
Krause also worries what the next four years will mean for people with other immigration statuses who don’t have a clear path to citizenship.
“Being a refugee is something that happened to you, you were forced to flee your home, no-one wants to leave their home.”
Seeking asylum is a right under international law. Krause said the refugees who now have a protected legal status were once asylum seekers who crossed a border in search of a new chance at life.
“As a refugee, you go through the process and you find credible fear for your claims,” she explained. “Asylum seekers have the right to go through their process and demonstrate they have a credible fear of persecution, and that's why they left their home. So it's really imperative that that right is protected and upheld.”
One organization working with people stuck in-between is Arkansas Immigrant Defense, or AID. The Springdale-based nonprofit gives legal help to people navigating the immigration system.
Mayra Esquivel is a lead paralegal at AID. She said, as they await Trump’s first actions when he returns to office, they’re busy with a lot of paperwork.
“We decided we’re going to try to file as many DACA renewals by the end of the year,” Esquivel said, citing concerns the president-elect will end the program once he returns to the White House.
DACA stands for Deferred Action for Child Arrivals. It began through an executive order by then-president Barack Obama. It protects people who came to the U.S. as children, also known as “dreamers,” from deportation. About a half million DACA recipients now live and work in the U.S., filing renewals and paying the associated fees every two years.
Right now, renewal fees cost over $500 for online renewals, and over $600 if you renew by paper, according to Esquivel.
Esquivel said DACA recipients have embraced the U.S. with open arms, enrolling in higher education, pursuing careers, and opening their own businesses.
“I mean [DACA recipients] are buying cars, they are buying homes, they are paying taxes as always – they were paying taxes even before they got a Social Security number, so they’re able to contribute even more economically.”
Trump said in a recent interview with NBC’s Meet The Press he wants DACA recipients to be able to stay in the U.S., but under his first administration he issued an order to unwind the program.
That order was devastating for DACA recipients and hopeful applicants, Esquivel said. With the order came seemingly arbitrary dates and restrictions on who could apply for renewals, making an already-complicated renewal process even harder, Esquivel said many people weren’t able to renew their work permits because of the order.
The order was reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2020.
Some of AID’s youngest clients are children with Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, a program for children under 18 years old fleeing unsafe conditions.
“They’re living in their home countries, and they are facing gang violence and they're facing persecution from gang members who are trying to recruit them,” Esquivel said. “They come up here in search of a better life and in search of protection.”
Esquivel said these child survivors turn themselves in at the border. Then they’re processed and held at a refugee resettlement shelter while they look for a sponsor, often a family member or friend already in the U.S.
But that doesn’t always mean their problems are over. Esquivel said AID gets requests from children who are still facing abuse or neglect in their new home. The sponsor might make them work against their will or prevent them from attending school.
“Right there we’re getting into some human trafficking. And people don’t realize sometimes these children don’t realize they’re being trafficked, these children don’t realize they’re neglected.”
The average age of these clients, Esquivel said, is around 13 or 14 years old.
AID helps these kids apply for work permits, critical documents for children who want to stay in the U.S. and find safety, according to Esquivel. Work permits allow these kids to get a Social Security number, access healthcare, and social benefits.
“Right now our child survivor clients are able to have work permits while they wait to be able to apply for a green card.” Esquivel said. “And they get to have access to healthcare right, but we don’t know if this is going to be the situation come January.”
Like DACA, the permits don’t guarantee citizenship.
AID is also creating a guide to prepare workplaces and schools for ICE raids, some of which made headlines in Arkansas under Trump’s last term.
Esquivel said the work can feel overwhelming, especially for a smaller organization like AID. She said AID currently isn’t taking any new clients because of the renewals and applications they’re trying to process before Trump’s inauguration.
“It's kind of hard to even know how to feel because you don’t know exactly what’s going to happen,” she said. “All you can do is just do what you can... and keep your eye on the helpers, keep your eye on those that want to help and want to fight for these communities.”
Even with these preventative measures, Esquivel still wonders what obstacles the next four years will bring.
President-elect Trump’s plans for immigration are sweeping. Since Election Day, he’s appointed Tom Homan, the former Immigration and Customs Enforcement director who has been called the “architect” of family separation, as a lead advisor on border policy. He’s promised to use police and the military to deport the estimated 11 million undocumented people living in the U.S. And, in his last term, he lowered the cap for refugees entering the U.S. to 18,000, a stark contrast to the latest report of 100,000 refugees welcomed in 2024.
“The uncertainty of it all is nerve-wracking,” Esquivel admits, but said AID is determined to continue helping immigrants across the state.
“We did it in 2016 and 2020, we can do it again.”
It’s also not easy to assuage clients that their temporary statuses won’t expire sooner. Esquivel said some people who now have citizenship have come to her with questions about whether their status could be revoked.
The uncertainty of the next four years impacts Canopy Northwest Arkansas too. Many refugees travel separately from their families, especially with children over the age of 18, according to Joanna Krause. She’s worried about what could happen if Trump pauses resettlement again.
“How long might they be separated? And I don’t – I don’t really have words to calm or comfort, because we just don’t know.”
Both Krause and Esquivel are frustrated with politics getting in the way of helping people.
“This is not a partisan issue. We’re a humanitarian program,” Krause said. “This is a hallmark of United States, that we are welcomers, that we open our arms and our doors to the world’s most vulnerable.”
“It’s ironic that they say ‘do it the legal way’, ‘do it the right way’, yet you’re attacking and imposing more obstacles on the ‘right way.’” said Esquivel.
Krause said more policies limiting the numbers of migrants allowed into the U.S. will only hurt the country, and that “maintaining the infrastructure for resettlement is imperative.”
“That was one of the most challenging parts of the first Trump administration was local resettlement agencies being forced to close. And that just dismantles the infrastructure that we have.”
Infrastructure that takes years to rebuild, while people cross borders in search of safety every day.
