Julie Horbenko does not know if she will be welcome in the United States much longer. She and her mother came to Spokane on former President Joe Biden’s Uniting for Ukraine humanitarian parole program. This gave them temporary residency while they figured out their next steps or waited for the war in Ukraine to end.
Even though she received an extension to her parole after reapplying and technically has two more years legally in the states, she’s unsure whether President Donald Trump will choose to deport her and others who are here on humanitarian parole.
“It’s feeling like when I’m thinking about buying a thing, I always think, if I’m going to leave, am I going to take this thing or not?” Horbenko said. “It might happen, and we need to be ready.”
She believes the current president could make her and other temporary legal refugees illegal with a single executive order. This would be despite some having had their status extended by contract with the U.S., say for two years, when they reapplied under the former administration.
“The government makes legal people illegal,” Horbenko said. “And a humanitarian parole is a very temporary thing. If it works or not depends on the president. So, if he says, ‘tomorrow it doesn’t work anymore,’ that’s what he can do.”
As of Thursday, March 6, that uncertainty moved closer to certainty. Trump admitted to considering ending the temporary status of all 240,000 Ukrainians, which may potentially open them up to deportation.
Horbenko works at World Relief Spokane (WRS) as a case manager assisting Ukrainians in their resettlement. After she arrived in Spokane with her mother, she stayed at Thrive International that first year, and she came to WRS for help to find work. Her English proficiency quickly got her a job there. She's worked at WRS for two years.
Since Trump came into office, several executive orders and policy changes have greatly affected the work WRS does — two of which he signed his first week of office.
On Jan. 20 Trump signed “Suspension of the Refugee Resettlement Program,” which temporarily stopped refugees coming to the states. This included refugees who were thoroughly vetted, many of whom were Afghan allies who worked for the U.S. military.
Christi Armstrong, executive director of WRS, said refugees legally ready to come into the U.S. who had their flight arrangements made or had tickets in hand, also had their flights canceled.
“Between October 1, 2024, and September 30, 2025, (WRS’ fiscal year), we were supposed to have resettled 750 [refugees],” Armstrong said. “By Jan. 24, 2025, we had 306 of those.”
On Feb. 25, a court ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Jamal Whitehead called this executive order unconstitutional because it “likely ‘crossed the line’ of separation of powers” and ruled to block it, reported Washington State Standard. However, the current administration has yet to obey the ruling and has until Monday to respond to the judge’s follow-up request for a status report telling him of its plans to reinstate the program.
With no more need to help refugees resettle and watching the administration’s slow obedience to Whitehead’s ruling, WRS laid off 15 employees. Both campuses of WRS are quieter and the joy is diminished without new refugees to welcome, Armstrong said.
“It’s difficult to walk past empty desks that were once occupied by people we spent the bulk of our waking hours with every week,” she said. “We still have plenty of refugees coming in for workshops, job clubs, meetings with case managers, baby showers, etc., but we miss partnering up with our all-star arrival volunteers from local churches to meet people at the airport every week and helping our new refugee friends get settled into their new community.”
The second order signed by Trump on January 24 — that has a significant impact on WRS — was the “Stop-Work Order from the U.S. Department of State.” This effectively ended the funds used to assist refugees in their first 90-days of transition into the U.S. This money from the federal government, coordinated through WRS, went toward their living expenses like clothing, rent, food and transportation.
“The problem with it is we had all these people who had arrived between October and January, and the resettlement period is 90-days long … the people who arrived before the executive order, those funds are now frozen,” Armstrong said.
She gave an example. Recently, a seven-member family arrived from Sudan in January with nothing but the clothes on their backs, two grocery-sized bags full of belongings and flip flops on their feet. Until January 24, each member of the household received about $1,325, Armstrong said, from federal resettlement funds.
“Then in January, they say, ‘Oh, sorry, you’re not getting whatever is left,” she said.
WRS has been able to pull from other resources to help fill the gap, some coming from a recent influx of donations, said Keri Bambock, WRS communications coordinator.
“Our donations team has agreed that there has been a significant increase in donations compared to last year at this time,” Bambock said, adding they are not currently sharing those numbers.
WRS has existed in Spokane for 32 years with the mission to “boldly engage in the world’s greatest crisis in partnership with the church,” Armstrong said.
Because of this partnership, she thinks WRS can make it through these new challenges.
“If funding is just cut to the point where we have minimal staff, or, God forbid, we have to close our doors, we’re working with people in the churches so that we can be sure that there is a safety net, that there’s relationships built and places where our refugee and immigrant friends can go, where they know they’ll be welcome and find some help,” Armstrong said.
In addition to an increase in donations, seven new churches have stepped up to volunteer or provide resources to assist refugees and five new Good Neighbor Teams from additional churches have been processed, said Bambock. These teams of volunteers come from local churches to walk alongside a refugee family, offering support.
Faith Bible Church has been partnering with WRS for several years. Nathan Thiry, FBC’s Discipleship and Outreach pastor, believes strongly in the work he and his church have been doing to help refugees the last several years. He doesn’t think refugee resettlement should be treated the same as illegal immigration.
“To stop receiving and resettling refugees in the U.S.A. is a great tragedy and it saddens me. We hope and pray that the government will permit legal, careful refugee resettlement to continue soon,” Thiry said. “Refugee resettlement is a net positive financially and socially and ethically for our nation. It should not be lumped together with illegal immigration, which is an entirely different thing.”
While some refugees, like Horbenko and her clients, still live in the U.S., they remain in limbo. Because their refugee status is temporary, she said they don’t know what their future will be.
Horbenko and her mom only know what the past looks like in the city where she spent most of her life: destroyed. If she and her mom were required to leave the U.S. now, she said they do not know where they would go.
“Unfortunately, there is no home,” she said.