HIAS in the News

01/22/2026: Merrill Zack, HIAS’ vice president of community engagement, told eJP that individual members of the Minnesota Jewish community have been actively involved in the protests and activism throughout, which she said is a sign that American Jewry’s support for immigrants has never waned. When HIAS calls, people stand up to help, she said, and when HIAS doesn’t call, Jews call the organization offering to help.

01/09/2026: “U.S. citizens cannot be deported, even if they originally immigrated here from somewhere else. But when someone is denaturalized, they revert back to their status as a green card holder. And as a green card holder, you can be deported,” says Smita Dazzo, HIAS’ deputy lead of domestic programs.

12/31/2025: “As a Jewish organization, we also know all too well what it means for an entire community to be targeted because of the actions of one person,” HIAS said.

12/08/2025: “I know I am standing in the shadow of giants who have stood before me,” said Oppenheim. “Not just the CEOs or leaders of HIAS, but the people who took a chance in getting on a boat or a plane going somewhere new, not knowing anyone, hoping they would be safe and hoping they would have welcoming arms on the other side. To me that’s where I see myself… in extending my arms and saying that I’m not afraid to welcome and I’m not afraid to see the humanity in another person.”

11/26/2025: Mark Hetfield, president of the refugee resettlement organization HIAS, told CNN that threatening refugees with status removal is a misuse of taxpayer money and is harmful to communities.

11/25/2025: “This plan is shockingly ill-conceived,” said Naomi Steinberg, vice president of U.S. policy and advocacy at HIAS, a refugee resettlement agency. “This is a new low in the administration’s consistently cold-hearted treatment of people who are already building new lives and enriching the communities where they have made their homes.”

11/15/2025: “While we are concerned about any person in this country going hungry needlessly, there is something spectacularly cruel about ripping out the safety net of people who came to this country who need just a little bit of time to get back on their feet and to begin to be able to contribute economically to this country,” said Naomi Steinberg, vice president of policy and advocacy at HIAS, a Jewish nonprofit that assists refugees and asylum seekers.

HIAS estimates that the SNAP changes will cut benefits for roughly 250,000 refugees and other humanitarian visa holders.

10/30/2025: “There is still time to preserve this country’s proud legacy of protecting those in harm’s way, to honor our commitment to refugees already approved for resettlement and to make real God’s call to welcome the stranger.” (Richard Santos is president and CEO of Church World Service. Beth Oppenheim is CEO of HIAS. Myal Greene is president and CEO of World Relief.) 

10/06/2025: Some 128,000 refugees have currently been approved for resettlement in the United States and are now stuck in limbo, said Mark Hetfield, president of HIAS, the Jewish refugee resettlement agency. In addition, 14,000 Jews, Christians and other religious minorities in Iran have long been registered with the refugee program.

“How can a president who claims to stand for religious and American values and who claims to support legal and orderly migration turn his back on so many refugees who followed the rules, while moving white South Africans to the front of the line?” he said.

08/07/2025: “It’s very clear that there’s a concerted effort on the part of the U.S. government to maximize the number of places and locations to which they can deport people,” said Nicolas Palazzo, a policy advisor at the refugee advocacy organization HIAS.

07/15/2025: “We gather tonight to give meaning to the words ‘never again,’” Rabbi Sharon Mars of Temple Israel Columbus said. “As people of faith, and as Americans, we refuse to remain silent at the co-opting of our nation’s statutes and express alarm about the path down which it leads. We are calling on our elected officials to do everything they can to ensure that the United States protects and respects the rights of those living within our borders and re-establishes our commitment to the pathways that makes refuge possible for those who have been displaced.”

06/05/2025: The language in the travel ban on the refugee program is unclear, said Naomi Steinberg, vice president of U.S. Policy & Advocacy at HIAS, one of the refugee resettlement agencies in the United States. But she noted that the refugee program is already suspended due to a separate executive order Trump signed immediately after his Jan. 20 inauguration.

03/26/2025: “The Jewish community is all-too-familiar with what happens when countries turn their commitments to refugees, and that’s why HIAS will keep fighting in court for the lives and the safety of displaced people around the world,” said HIAS President Mark Hetfield in a press release.

03/18/2025: HIAS, a refugee advocacy nongovernmental organization operating in Aboutengue camp, had spent almost two years building trust in the refugee community so at-risk women could approach it with issues of domestic and gender-based violence, as well as in the aftermath of disasters for emergency help and funding.

03/12/2025: Hetfield says the Trump administration’s actions have damaged the trust many organizations had in the United States government. “We’ve decided that they are just not a trustworthy partner anymore. The U.S. government is not a good partner,” said Hetfield. “They did not really evaluate which programs they were going to close. There was no careful thought that went into that.”

03/06/2025: “We knew this was coming, so we tried very hard to promote exceptions, particularly for Iranian religious minorities,” Mark Hetfield, the president of HIAS, said in an interview, recalling the period preceding Trump’s inauguration. “We tried it through every channel we could.”

02/25/2025: The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program had persisted through seven presidencies, including Mr. Trump’s first term. The plaintiffs have accused Mr. Trump of violating the law that established the program, as well as the rule-making procedures of the Administrative Procedure Act and the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee to due process.