Cecelia Dama Lizotte considered closing her Providence restaurant, Suya Joint, when her brother, Paul Dama, right, was arrested and detained by ICE agents while on his way to church.
A ragged line of human need trails outside the Refugee Dream Center, scrolling through their phones, chatting softly, inching down the hallway for a box of groceries. Wednesday is food distribution day, and Jan Botha( a pseudonym) is there to resupply. In February, he, his wife and three children left South Africa at the U. S. government’ s encouragement. In October, Trump froze all refugee admissions except for white Afrikaners as a persecuted minority. The Bothas were among the nearly 4,500 South Africans who have since immigrated to the U. S. Botha didn’ t get the welcome he expected. Last July, the Republican Congress cut nearly $ 1 trillion in funding for food stamps and medical care for legal immigrants. About 90,000 lost access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The EPI estimates that 2,300 Rhode Islanders were affected, an impact of about $ 5.5 million. The restrictions placed on access to Medicare, Medicaid, government subsidies to purchase ACA plans and tax credits means another 1.4 million are expected to lose health coverage by 2034.
“ That is a big shock for me,” Botha says.“ It’ s like feeling a heart attack but you don’ t want to look at the signs. So, I must get used to the feeling.”
It has likewise shocked the nonprofit resettlement agency founded by Omar Bah and his wife, Teddi Jallow. The center, which serves about 2,700 Rhode Islanders annually, lost $ 500,000 in federal grants. SNAP cuts pushed the demand beyond the center’ s capacity, forcing it to purchase food at about $ 250 a week for a family of five to supplement private and Rhode Island Community Food Bank donations, while shouldering the entire burden of food support for South African refugees.
“ Fear of ICE raids has caused many clients, including those who may still be technically eligible, to disengage from public assistance programs entirely. As a result, they are turning to us as their primary source,” Jallow says.“ We are doing everything we can to bridge these gaps, but the cumulative impact is placing the organization under considerable financial pressure.”
The effects of Trump’ s everything, everywhere, all-at-once approach are rippling through the economy. A recent report co-authored by the EPI estimates that the loss of low-wage immigrant labor will increase costs on everything from dining out to construction, and lead to labor shortages and employment losses for U. S. workers whose jobs depend on immigrant workers. Undocumented immigrants alone contribute as much as $ 95 million in state and local tax revenue, according to the EPI.
David Molina-Hernandez, formerly of Central Falls-based immigrant advocacy organization Fuerza Laboral, says that
80 RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY I JULY 2026