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Take Action: End Refugee Green Card Application Freeze and "Re-vetting" Resettled Refugees

In July 2025, Congress passed legislation, H.R. 1, mandating that refugees and other humanitarian entrants without green cards will be cut off from Medicaid, Medicare, and CHIP eligibility — as well as SNAP (food assistance). Meanwhile, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has continued its adjudication pause on over 100,000 refugee green card applications, leaving resettled refugees in a deadly bureaucratic trap.

These policies combined leave many refugees without health coverage, which has devastating consequences, particularly for those who count on Medicaid for lifesaving care. Though children and pregnant women in some states will continue to be able to access Medicaid through programs like CHIPRA 214, tens of thousands of pending green card applicants will lose their health coverage as soon as October 1, 2026.

In tandem with frivolous ‘re-vetting’ of already arrived refugees, the administration is destabilizing decades of precedent and putting new members of our communities in harm’s way.

Take action to call on Congress to pressure the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and USCIS to: 

  • Resume full adjudication of refugee I-485 applications immediately and commit publicly to clearing the backlog.  
  • Immediately establish, a dedicated channel through which members of Congress and legal representatives can request expedited adjudication for applicants facing termination of medical coverage.  
  • End the unnecessary re-vetting of refugees who have already cleared the most rigorous screening in the U.S. immigration system. 

Check out a joint letter and accompanying press release, led by Church World Service (CWS) and Refugee Council USA (RCUSA), signed by 58 other refugee-serving, religious, veteran, refugee-led, humanitarian and community-based organizations calling for an end to the refugee green card processing freeze and ‘re-vetting’ initiative that targets resettled refugees. News coverage can be found here (New York Times, Washington Post).

More information is available via this state-by-state resource and NILC’s new commentary, What Immigrants Need to Know About the New Medicaid Eligibility Restrictions.