By Michelle Boorstein · The Washington Post (c) 2025
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops sued the Trump administration on Tuesday, asking a judge to declare the suspension of aid to refugees unlawful and demand the White House pay millions it owes the Church for refugee care.
The suit by the USCCB, which represents the leadership of the Catholic Church in the United States, comes as the Trump administration is in a standoff with faith-based groups. Such groups provide much of the domestic and foreign aid the administration has halted or seeks to – particularly around the care of refugees and migrants.
The Church’s longtime partnership with the U.S. government “has helped nearly a million individuals find safety and build their lives in the United States,” USCCB spokeswoman Chieko Noguchi wrote to The Washington Post on Tuesday night, in reference to its work with refugee resettlement. “We are urging the government to uphold its legal and moral obligations to refugees and to restore the necessary funding to ensure that faith-based and community organizations can continue this vital work that reflects our nation’s values of compassion, justice and hospitality.”
Last month, Vice President JD Vance criticized the U.S. Catholic Church’s efforts to help immigrants and refugees, suggesting the Church is motivated by money, and alleged without evidence that it works with millions of “illegal immigrants.” Elon Musk, a top adviser to Trump, shared a tweet earlier this month calling “illegal” multiple Lutheran organizations that work in the United States to provide health care to homeless people, run food pantries, and help migrants and refugees.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, names as defendants the State Department, the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration and the Department of Health and Human Services. It says the bishops have partnered with the U.S. government for nearly 50 years, and that the bureau has committed to provide $65 million to the USCCB “for the immediate physical needs and integration of refugees into their new communities.”
“But now, after refugees have already arrived and been placed in USCCB’s care, the government is attempting to pull the rug out from under USCCB’s programs by halting funding.”
The suit says the Trump administration hasn’t made any payments to the USCCB since Jan. 24 and owes money for services that go back to November.
The impact is “devastating” for the USCCB and the people with whom it works, the suit says. More than 6,700 refugees assigned to the USCCB by the government were still within their “90-day transition period,” the suit said.
As a result, the USCCB now has millions of dollars in pending, unpaid reimbursements and “is accruing millions more each week.” The conference has started the process of laying off 50 people and “faces irreparable damage to its longstanding refugee resettlement programs and its reputation and relationship with … the refugee populations it serves.”
The suit says the USCCB spends much more on refugee resettlement than it gets from the federal government.
“The USCCB is currently awaiting approximately $13 million of unpaid reimbursements and currently owes an additional $11.6 million to its subrecipients that it is unable to reimburse.”
The suit is the latest by faith-based groups against the Trump administration.
Last week, more than two dozen Christian and Jewish groups sued in federal court over the White House’s new policy allowing immigration agents to enter houses of worship to make arrests. That suit said the policy violated their religious freedom and ability to minister to migrants.
Clergy across the country have reported that migrants, fearing arrests that could come in churches or schools under the new policy, aren’t attending worship services or religious school.
Quakers, Sikhs and others have filed a similar suit that is now pending in U.S. District Court in Maryland.