President Trump’s freeze on new refugees entering the country has left one Afghan family in Baltimore divided between two lands.

In May, a local aid group provided a new, three-bedroom home for the refugees — a 53-year-old father, his wife and daughter — in the city’s Cedonia neighborhood. But their family relocation remains incomplete.

That’s because one of the bedrooms is empty and waiting for the family’s 20-year-old son, who had also planned to gain refugee status but remains stuck in Afghanistan after Trump’s order, according to Shakera Rahimi, the family’s case manager at World Relief.

The family is one of hundreds in the Baltimore area who were on track to enter the country legally as refugees, but due to the new presidential administration, remain shut out, at least temporarily.

On Jan. 20, an executive order signed by President Trump suspended the entry program and canceled incoming travel arrangements for about 10,000 approved refugees. In a separate memo, the administration ordered outside resettlement agencies receiving federal funds to stop providing services to refugees who’ve already arrived.

“The United States lacks the ability to absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees, into its communities in a manner that does not compromise the availability of resources for Americans, that protects their safety and security, and that ensures the appropriate assimilation of refugees,” Trump’s order said.

In an interview on the CBS television news show “Face the Nation” late last month, Vice President J.D Vance defended the ban, saying he didn’t believe that the refugees entering the country were being properly vetted.

The stoppage is part of a sweeping new effort by the administration to stall the entry of refugees until the larger system can be evaluated, according to administration officials.

Also affected are the federal grants from the State Department that subsidize the system of nonprofit groups and private agencies that assist refugees with housing, food and other payments during the first 90 days in the country. Under the new ban, refugees and the agencies that support them say they fear for the future.

“Every second, I’ve been receiving calls” from families, Rahimi said. She doesn’t know if there will be enough funding to keep her job, help clients with rent and keep their children in school. “We don’t know what this stop means.”

The U.S. for decades has welcomed thousands of people a year fleeing countries to evade wars, genocides, famine and other crises. But agencies across the Baltimore area — home to some of the nation’s largest refugee resettlement nonprofits — are now decrying the pullback as “unprecedented” and “a step backward” that would have an “adverse impact on the American economy.”

Global Refuge, a nonprofit formerly known as Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, expected to welcome 1,100 refugees to Maryland, including 250 in Baltimore, this year through September, officials said. World Relief, one of the smallest resettlement agencies in Baltimore, was planning for its own group of 130.

Each year the president consults with Congress to set a cap on the number of refugees admitted to the country. Before President Obama left office, he raised the number from 110,000 for the 2017 fiscal year. After President Trump won his first presidential election, he cut the cap by half and then reduced it again the following year to 45,000, the lowest of any White House since 1980.

That was only the ceiling.

The number of refugees actually resettled in the U.S. also fell to around 53,000 in 2017 and then just over 22,000 in 2018. In Maryland, the number of refugees received dropped from 1,072 to 465 .The corresponding federal grants dispatched to assist them also dwindled.

Recently, the tide had risen when President Biden doubled the refugee admission cap to 125,000 to allow for Afghans who partnered with the U.S military and more than a hundred thousand other Afghans and Ukrainians fleeing war zones.

Several agencies devoted to rehoming refugees in the U.S. said the administration’s move to freeze the program indefinitely is especially challenging.

Throughout Trump’s first administration, the refugee system suffered severely, said Daniel Wilkinson, the executive director of World Relief’s Baltimore office. “It wasn’t killed overnight.”

Some refugee agency leaders said the system does need reform, but Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge, said she doesn’t see these drastic changes under Trump as a way to reform the system.

They said they hope their work can continue because refugees and other immigrants have helped boost the populations in declining cities like Baltimore, and started local businesses which can help local economies.

Khalis Noori, a former refugee from Afghanistan who co-owns My Kabul Restaurant and Cafe in Laurel, said he opened in 2023 to help other immigrants to celebrate holidays from their homelands, become legal residents and citizens, and share important news about their lives all marked by relocation.

Noori, 36, said he has also employed dozens of refugees through the restaurant, many of whom are now frightened about their futures.

“No matter how much you tell them, when they are listening to the news, hearing all the rumors around in the community, that gives them some sort of fear,” Noori said.

After the Trump ban, Noori said, he worries about families who were supposed to make their way to America and may have sold their belongings anticipating a new life ahead.

Noori left Afghanistan two days after the Taliban takeover and remembers his journey well. “We were grateful that we were out, but something that was really, really shocking was losing my country and fleeing my country ... the country that we envisioned to rebuild,” Noori said.

Due to the immediate threat of persecution facing most Afghans after the Taliban’s coup in 2021, tens of thousands were granted temporary entry into the country as humanitarian parolees. That immigration status is different from that of a refugee, who could spend years being vetted in the country they aim to emigrate from before entering the United States.

Noori added that on top of juggling to pay bills, support their families and learn English, many refugees already feel a constant need to prove that “they are not a burden and are actually contributors.”

At his restaurant, refugees get 50% off of their checks for meals like lamb shank covered in a pile of fluffy yellow rice, and the restaurant solicits donations to continue helping them.

“We don’t know what comes tomorrow, but we are strong, we are hopeful,” he said. “And we are going to fight back.”