Trump administration immigration policies leave Ukrainian refugees in limbo
A woman holds a sign reading Stop the Genocide of Ukrainians during a rally in Copley Square marking the one year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 26, 2023 in Boston, MA. (Nancy Lane/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via Getty Images)
War
In summer 2023, Anna arrived in the United States to start a new life in the midwestern state of Illinois.
After more than a year of war, she had fled her home in Kyiv to seek shelter abroad from the drone and missile strikes that regularly target the Ukrainian capital. Now, she finally had a safe place to settle for the long term.
Or so she thought.
Today, Anna is again at risk of losing her home. As the U.S. President Donald Trump administration clamps down on illegal immigration and seeks to largely end refugee resettlement in the United States, Ukrainian refugees find themselves in a particularly uncertain predicament.
Anna, who asked to remain anonymous due to concerns for her legal status, is one of nearly 240,000 Ukrainian refugees who have arrived in the U.S. since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion under Uniting for Ukraine (U4U). Launched under U.S. President Joe Biden, the humanitarian program grants these Ukrainians asylum in the country for two years.
Then, President Donald Trump returned to office on promises to secure the U.S. border with Mexico and conduct mass deportations of illegal immigrants.
On the one hand, Ukrainians were not the targets of Trump's campaign rhetoric, which largely focused on drug cartels and criminal gangs from South and Central America. On the other, they risk getting caught up in the new administration's broader push for expedited deportations and refugee repatriations.
In some cases, the Ukrainian refugees' humanitarian parole will expire in 2025, and their applications for a new status are still pending. While they wait for these bureaucratic issues to be resolved, White House statements and media reports have painted a complicated and at times alarming picture of what their future may hold.
"Ukrainian refugees in the U.S. are in the most difficult situation compared to those in other countries," Anna told the Kyiv Independent. "We have become puppets in a political game."
Ukrainians stuck in limbo
Launched in April 2022, U4U offers more than a right to remain in the United States. It also grants Ukrainian refugees benefits like work permits, health insurance, childcare, food assistance, and cash.
The program's application process ran for nearly three years before being suspended in January 2025. It has not resumed. Since then, Ukrainian refugees have been left trying to read the smoke signals from the White House.
In May, the Washington Post reported that the government planned to spend $250 million in foreign aid money to repatriate refugees from active conflict zones, including about 200,000 Ukrainians.
But the documents cited by the newspaper were labeled "pre-decisional" and a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security described them as "outdated."
In early June, the Post reported that the Trump administration was planning to transfer thousands of undocumented immigrants — including Ukrainians — to its prison facility at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A White House spokesperson later called the publication "fake news."
Even if these reports were not accurate, they frightened many Ukrainians in the U.S. But some of the challenges facing these Ukrainian refugees actually began even before Trump returned to the White House.
After their two-year asylum period under U4U ends, Ukrainian nationals typically apply for temporary protected status (TPS), which allows them to remain in the U.S. legally. However, today, not everyone can get TPS. Under U.S. law, it is only available to those Ukrainians who arrived in the country before Aug. 16, 2023.
As a result, the number of Ukrainians at risk of deportation after the U4U program expires may increase sharply this August. Moreover, thousands of Ukrainians are still waiting for their TPS to be extended.
The situation grew even more fraught in February, when the U.S. government suspended the processing of applications for immigrant benefits — including work permits and changes of status — for foreign nationals who entered the country through humanitarian programs.
On May 28, the U.S. district court in Massachusetts ordered the Trump administration to resume reviewing immigration applications. On June 9, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that it had started to process them again.
But according to Ukrainians interviewed by the Kyiv Independent, their cases have not moved forward.
Olena Manilich, an immigration attorney in New York and herself a Ukrainian immigrant, says the uncertainty is making life for the refugees more difficult.
"As an immigrant myself, I know that the first three or four years are tough," she said. "Now, when people have come to their senses a little bit and felt what life is like, they are again uncertain — it's terrible."
No way back home
The chaos and confusion have hit Ukrainian refugees hard.
Anna, who settled in Illinois in 2023, is fluent in English and previously worked in the financial sector in Ukraine. That allowed her to quickly find a job in the same field in the U.S.
But after her two-year asylum period through U4U expired, she was unable to receive a work permit under TPS — it has not yet been approved.
"Being left without a work permit is the worst thing in the U.S., because (that document) allows you not only to work, but also to get a driver's license, unemployment benefits, food assistance, and so on," Anna said.
She feels disappointed by the turn of events. She emphasizes that, contrary to what many people assume, moving to the U.S. during wartime “wasn't the American dream."
Ukrainians "came to the U.S. to start their lives anew," Anna said. "They have extreme trauma because of the war."
At the same time, returning home also often isn't an option. She notes that several of her friends have no place to return to: Their hometowns have been destroyed or remain under Russian occupation.
Anna hopes that the Ukrainian government will lobby the U.S. to allow Ukrainian refugees to stay.
"I believe that it is better to focus on helping people to settle down rather than forcibly returning them to Ukraine," Anna said.
At risk
Anna isn't the only Ukrainian who doesn't know whether she will receive a U.S. work permit. Many others have had their legal status expire, but have been unable to receive a new one.
Oleksandra Budenko, 24, came to Massachusetts from Kyiv in 2022 under U4U. Before moving to the United States, Budenko competed for the Ukrainian national fencing team. After the full-scale invasion began, she shifted her focus to coaching and now works at a local fencing club in Boston.
But her TPS expired in May, and her application for an extension remains under review.
In many ways, Budenko is more fortunate than Anna: She applied for TPS earlier, so her work permit was automatically extended in January. That means she can continue to work even as her application is reviewed.
"Like most Ukrainians I know here, I'm officially employed and pay taxes every month," Budenko said, "so I just don't see the point of Trump kicking out honest people who are just working and living their lives there."
But like other Ukrainians with similar cases, Budenko may still be at risk: She has not yet received confirmation that her legal status will be extended.
The uncertainty even extends to organizations that help Ukrainian refugees.
Lina Ngo, a Vietnamese-Ukrainian from Kyiv, arrived in Washington state in 2022 through U4U. Her family fled Ukraine on the third day of the full-scale invasion. After spending several months in Europe, they settled in the U.S. in August 2022.
In Ukraine, Ngo studied at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and worked in marketing. After relocating to the United States, she pursued further education and now works for the Refugee Women's Alliance, a nonprofit supporting Ukrainian and Afghan refugees.
But the Trump administration's sharp cuts to foreign aid and domestic spending have left Ngo's organization without funding for several of its projects. Meanwhile, its clients are often afraid to visit its office: They worry that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will try to detain them there. After all, the Trump administration has tasked it with making 3,000 immigration-related arrests a day.
"There were precedents when (ICE) detained residents with valid documents based on skin color and cultural affiliation," Ngo said. "People are trying to be careful."
Despite having built a life for herself in the U.S., Ngo wants to return home — eventually. For the moment, she does not feel that Ukraine is safe because of the constant Russian aerial attacks.
This summer, Ngo earned an associate's degree in business administration from Bellevue College with the help of federal student loans. She wants to continue her studies. However, she remains uncertain about her future in the United States, as recent policy changes under the new administration could impact educational programs and access to federal aid.
"It is unclear how to plan my life, whether Ukrainians will be allowed to stay in the U.S. after 2026, and whether I will be able to work or study," Ngo said. "The uncertainty is very stressful."
Anastasiia Verzun contributed reporting to this story.
Author's note:
Hi, this is Kateryna Hodunova, the author of this article. The outbreak of a brutal, large-scale invasion has torn hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians away from everything they know and love. Forced to flee their homes against their will, they face the heartbreaking reality of starting over in foreign lands, haunted by the constant threat of Russian attacks that keep them from returning.
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