When 21-year-old Jefferson arrived in the U.S. in December, a case manager from a resettlement agency met him at the airport and took him straight to an apartment. Within a month, the manager also helped him land a job operating a machine that packs lettuce.
Jefferson's new life in America was taking shape. Then suddenly, in late January, his case manager disappeared.
"I was left alone, with no one to provide guidance in this new country," he says, speaking in Spanish because he doesn't yet know much English.
It turned out the case manager had been let go — and their work phone shut down — after the Trump administration froze refugee resettlement.
Though the tariffs on goods imported to the U.S. from Canada and Mexico have
