Fourteen refugees were on the verge of being resettled in southern Minnesota and being reunited with family members with the help of Catholic Charities of Southern Minnesota when their trips were canceled after President Donald Trump signed an executive order suspending the program, a spokesman for the Catholic organization said.

All 14 had purchased plane tickets and were scheduled to arrive in the region this month when Trump authorized the suspension. Two of the 14 refugees were living in Thailand but were native to Myanmar. One of the two was an elderly grandmother who was being reunited with her family in Austin.

The other dozen were from the same family and were coming from a country in the Middle East to settle in Rochester with their family.

The decision also affected another group of 50 or so refugees who were in the pipeline to be resettled in southern Minnesota sometime later this year, after their paperwork was completed. Those plans were also upended by the order signed by Trump on the first day of his presidency. Some of these refugees were from Afghanistan.

“Confusion and disappointment,” said Adam Jarvis, director of Refugee Settlement Services for Catholic Charities of Southern Minnesota, in describing the reaction of family members living in the region when told they would not be reunited with relatives.

“I didn’t see anybody angry. I just saw a lot of disappointment because the refugee process takes between two and 20 years, so by the time somebody’s been approved and has their ticket, the family is pretty excited,” he said.

Adding to the challenges: Families settled in the region within the past three months are facing financial struggles. Typically, after a family arrives, they receive a small federal grant to defray the cost of basic necessities such as rent, utilities and food for 90 days while they resettle and look for work. But those grants were suspended as well as a result of an administration order halting all foreign aid.

Catholic Charities is trying to raise donations locally to make up the difference.

“The people who have arrived within the last three months do not have access to the funding that was promised to them. So we are currently raising donations to be able to provide for these people,” Jarvis said.

Qualifying as a refugee means that the person has been forcibly displaced from their homeland and is either unwilling or unable to return for fear of physical harm or death. They can also qualify if they face persecution or oppression for political, social, racial or religious reasons.

Applicants are extensively vetted before they depart for the U.S. The screening process for refugees includes a review by eight different agencies and six security databases, Jarvis said. It also includes background and biometric security checks and three in-person interviews. The president’s order suspended the Refugee Admission Program, which has been in place since 1980, for a minimum of 90 days pending a review.

Jarvis said the last couple weeks have been spent answering questions from confused family members in the region seeking to understand why the program was suspended and their reunification with family members delayed, often after years of waiting.

“Many have been in the process for 10 years,” he said. “They’ve completed the paperwork, and they’ve been approved on every level. They have their plane tickets. Why can’t they come? We’re trying to explain that.”

Jarvis said some of the affected family members were so close to leaving for the U.S. that they had been told to report to the capital city of the country in which they were living and given specific dates for their plane departure.

The order suspending the refugee program was part of a slew of executive actions related to immigration that were signed on Trump’s first day as president. On the campaign trail, Trump vowed to begin his second term with both new and old efforts to curb legal migration and deport those who are in the U.S. without legal status.

The order suspending the refugee program is vague about what conditions would have to be met for it to be reactivated. All it says is that it will last “until such time as the further entry into the United States of refugees aligns with the interests of the United States.”

“Our hope is that by April 20, when the review is put in, that we will be able to resume activities,” Jarvis said.

Jarvis said his hope for the program’s continuation is that refugees have consistently benefited the country from an economic standpoint.

Some 196,000 refugees were admitted into the U.S. during the four years of the Biden administration, with the national Catholic Charities organization helping facilitate 20% of those relocations.