An executive order enacted in January cut federal funding for refugee resettlement agencies and placed an indefinite ban on refugees coming into the U.S. As caseworkers for agencies like Church World Service and Catholic Charities were laid off, Dallas nonprofit Rio Valley Relief Project stepped in to make sure Dallas refugees didn't feel stranded or alone.
For The Dallas Morning News:
Cassie Stewart held her phone as her team leaned over the table to hear the call. The four women took notes, circling bullet points between gulps of chai lattes from La Casita Coffee in Dallas.
They wore matching gray T-shirts with the Rio Valley Relief Project logo.
“We’ve already talked about that, like maybe giving her a ride to the dentist,” Stewart said on the phone to Jenna Dobyns, from Church World Service. “I know that’s a big need for y’all with all the casework.”
The volunteers with Rio Valley Relief Project, a Dallas nonprofit that assists refugee resettlement agencies, deliberated next steps for a Honduran refugee woman. She needed to see a gynecologist for a problem with her uterus. One of her six children, who has a tooth abscess, needed a clinic.
Stewart and the team worried whether the woman’s rent assistance through Church World Service would continue through the next month.
Dobyns with Church World Service, a national refugee resettlement agency with an office in Dallas, told Stewart that the refugee clinic has over 800 refugees in the queue. The Honduran woman’s initial intake screening, which should have happened when she arrived at the beginning of January, had to be pushed to the end of March.
Carla Bayona (center right) talks to Cassie Stewart (right), Rebecca Wilson (center left) and Jackie Claudet-Mitterer (left) while on the phone with Church World Service while planning how to help refugee families at La Casita Coffee in Dallas, on Friday, Feb. 21, 2025.
Through an executive order by President Donald Trump in January, displaced people waiting to travel into the U.S. to take the final steps to gain refugee status were denied entry, and funding for refugee resettlement agencies was halted.
“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,” according to the executive order.
As a result, organizations like Church World Service and Catholic Charities in Fort Worth laid off or furloughed hundreds of employees.
The funding freeze caused gaps in resettlement work and increased uncertainty in the refugee community, while putting a pause on refugees coming into the U.S.
When Church World Service’s caseworkers were dwindling, the Rio Valley Relief Project stepped in to ensure Dallas refugees didn’t feel alone or stranded.
“I feel like the rug has been kind of swept out from under their feet because some of the policy changes has made it to where [refugees] don’t get the benefits that they were going to get or were getting, and that’s really overwhelming,” Stewart said.
The Rio Valley Relief Project is not federally funded and relies on donations and grants to make ends meet for refugees.
Jackie Claudet-Mitterer, volunteer, grabs a few donated throw pillows to bring to the Ahmats' apartment at the Rio Valley Relief Project’s donation center in Carrollton, Texas, on Saturday, Feb. 8, 2025. The nonprofit stores all of their donated items in the back of RVRP founder Cassie Stewart's husband's law office.
Jackie Claudet-Mitterer (left) and Rebecca Wilson (center), volunteers, purchase household essentials for the Saleh family at Walmart in Dallas, on Saturday, Feb. 8, 2025. They rely on monetary donations to be able to make grocery trips like this.
Meet the team
Stewart founded the Rio Valley Relief Project in 2019 to assist asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border, and it has expanded to include refugee assistance, mainly furnishing apartments before they land so they feel safe and welcomed when they arrive in Dallas.
The team is made up of many volunteers who commit to aiding displaced people. Jackie Claudet-Mitterer and Rebecca Wilson decided to volunteer together in 2017 and met Stewart by constantly volunteering with the same organizations at the border and in the D-FW area.
When the Rio Valley Relief Project was founded, they were eager to get involved locally and help those in Dallas.
Rebecca Wilson (left), hands Moussa Saleh (center), 1, a pillow while bringing donated items to his family in their apartment in Dallas, on Saturday, Feb. 8, 2025.
Rebecca Wilson (left), volunteer, types questions into Google Translate, switching between English and French, with a group of Central African refugees while trying to figure out what items they need in their apartment in Dallas, Texas, on Saturday, Feb. 8, 2025. These group came into the U.S. in December, weeks before President Trump took office and placed a ban on any refugees coming into the country.
With the return in funding already being allocated, Stewart sees the effects in her daily work.
During the freeze, the Honduran refugee woman and her six kids learned their rent assistance had been pulled. They started selling and packing furniture and bought plane tickets to Minneapolis, where she had family.
Now she can pay the rent and stay in Dallas. However, Stewart is concerned about what this means for refugee resettlement long-term.
She said the Rio Valley Relief Project is constantly pivoting how it operates. Every time they find some type of footing, Stewart said, a new policy or shift happens, and they have to adjust.
“I hope that we always find the ones who need us the most and there’s always a refugee that needs something – that needs help,” Stewart said.
Cassie Stewart, founder of the Rio Valley Relief Project, poses for a portrait in her home in Dallas, on Wednesday, March 12, 2025. “I hope that we always find the ones who need us the most and there’s always a refugee that needs something – that needs help,” Stewart said
Dedication to service
The women involved in the Rio Valley Relief Project share a passion for serving others and for providing a welcoming environment.
In Claudet-Mitterer’s home, her walls are surrounded by her artwork.
A painting hangs above a wooden chest in front of her staircase and resembles a chihuahua as the trunk of a colorful tree.
She kept the painting from a time she used to create for hospice patients. The man she met in his final few weeks had never traveled outside of the country or knowingly interacted with anyone who wasn’t from the U.S.
Claudet-Mitterer was born in Lima, Peru, and immigrated to the U.S. in 2000 with her husband. She says she moved for love.
She was supposed to give the chihuahua painting to the man she met, but he died in the night as she finished the artwork. Now it hangs in her house.
He had never been to Peru, but Claudet-Mitterer said that through her words, art and stories, he was able to make it there.
“When everything is done and set, you want community, you want to be loved, you want to be remembered for that,” she said. “Nothing else counts. And you want to know that the people you leave behind, that you love, are good and are safe. And that is what this country is about.”
When Stewart started assisting refugees in 2015, she recalls taking her two children with her to babysit the kids while their parents took English classes.
Then something unexpected happened. An Afghan woman whom Stewart helped a few times was hospitalized after attempting to take her own life.
Shortly after, the woman moved to a neighborhood where she was able to surround herself with a community of friends.
Stewart is still in touch with her and said her story deepened her understanding of the refugees she works with and their reasons for leaving home, as well as what they endure to make it here.
In 2008, Claudet-Mitterer’s outlook on life changed when she had a medical scare during a regular eye exam. She reflected and decided she wanted to leave something meaningful behind. That’s why she pours a lot of energy into her art and her volunteer work.
She sells her artwork and uses the profit for the Rio Valley Relief Project. If a refugee needs groceries or they need a moving truck for furniture, she is able to partially fund them through her art.
“I think without this struggle, without that anxiety, without that condition, I will not be able to paint from the heart, talk from the heart, serve from the heart,” she said. “So, I’ll take it.”
hoaib Ibrahimi (center back) holds his son, Kiumars, 1, as Jackie Claudet-Mitterer (center right) and Cassie Stewart (right) take off their shoes and say hello at Ibrahimi’s apartment in Dallas, on Friday, Feb. 21, 2025. The Rio Valley Relief Project helped Ibrahimi’s family when he came to Dallas from Afghanistan in 2021 and supplied him with furniture, rugs and groceries.
To build a home
Hundreds of volunteers have worked with the Rio Valley Relief Project, according to Stewart. Whether they signed up for a one-time service opportunity to organize donations or made a trip to the U.S.-Mexico border to assist Catholic Charities. It all adds up.
Claudet-Mitterer said volunteers see how active she and Stewart, Wilson and another integral volunteer, Carla Bayona, are and think they have to be as involved.
“It’s okay if it’s just a drop in the bucket sometimes. We’re not always going to be able to do a ton of work, but even just the little things make a difference,” Stewart said.
Fewer refugees are coming to Dallas since Trump’s executive order, due to a partial ban on refugees and the withholding of foreign aid.
The team feels the weight of uncertainty, not knowing when the flow of refugees will continue or if it will come to a complete stop. At the same time, they feel the overwhelming weight of support.
More people are wanting to volunteer and donate items to contribute to their mission, increasing supplies but with no apartment to furnish.
So they pivot. They focus on the refugees who are here.
Raoul Ahmat (left), Abakar Ahmat (center) and Mahmat Saleh (right) all prepare to walk to a mosque for prayer in Dallas on Friday, April 4, 2025.
In the back of Stewart’s husband’s immigration law office in Carrollton, rows of shelves are full of household items. Dinner sets, mismatched lamps and boxes of hygiene items fill the space. In the middle of the rows, Wilson and Claudet-Mitterer sort through the donations.
They walk from box to box, placing items into a plastic bin they think will come in handy for a group of refugees from the Central African Republic that arrived in Dallas in December. They helped furnish their apartment, complete with beds, paintings, chairs and a large chest in the living room.
They rely on monetary donations and grants from churches to fund things that people can’t donate, like groceries.
According to Wilson, they’ve built a reliable network. Through their children’s schools and a Facebook page, they connected with people who want to help refugees, or they simply wanted to donate.
“They’ll text me and say, ‘Hey, we’re redecorating or my mom’s moving, we have this stuff – do you want it?’ ” she said.
They always say yes.
Lasting impact
In Shoaib Ibrahimi’s apartment on March 30, Afghan rugs overlapped each other and three children ran around, tumbling between two brown sectionals and popping grapes into their mouths.
Ibrahimi came to Dallas in October 2021 after fleeing political insecurity when the Taliban took control of the government a few months earlier.
Catholic Charities housed his family, and the Rio Valley Relief Project filled their place with furniture, two sectionals and a few rugs. Four years later, Ibrahimi and his family are fully integrated into Dallas and feel connected to the community.
Qaisar Ibrahimi, 4, leaves his family’s apartment to play with a neighbor before dinner on the first day of Eid al-Fitr in Dallas, on Sunday, March 30, 2025.
In return, the community relies on his experience and knowledge of how to get settled. Most of Ibrahimi’s neighbors are refugees, and he is constantly talking with newly arrived Afghans to give advice and help. In the past few months, the number of phone calls and texts he received had increased.
According to Ibrahimi, the refugees are scared — they have no rent assistance, no job, no money and their paperwork is pending.
As Ibrahimi’s children ran in and out of their apartment on the first day of Eid al-Fitr, neighbors greeted each other, visited homes and took evening strolls in the streets.
“We are just giving back to the community,” he said. “When we were new here, we received a lot of support from [Catholic Charities and the Rio Valley Relief Project]. So, now it is our time to help people. This is how society works.”
His youngest son, Kiumars, dove under a coffee table and smushed fallen grapes. His oldest son, Haroon, laughed as he tossed his head back on one of the sectionals given to them by the Rio Valley Relief Project.
“We always remember them,” he said.
Shoaib Ibrahimi (left) holds his son, Kiumars (right),1, after dinner on the first day of Eid al-Fitr in their family apartment in Dallas, on Sunday, March 30, 2025. Ibrahimi moved to the U.S. after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan and feels he made the right decision. With the help of Stewart and her team, he had been able to start building a life for himself and his family. “We always remember them,” he said.
Photo Gallery:
Jackie Claudet-Mitterer, volunteer, grabs a few donated throw pillows to bring to the Ahmats' apartment at the Rio Valley Relief Project’s donation center in Carrollton, Texas, on Saturday, Feb. 8, 2025. The nonprofit stores all of their donated items in the back of RVRP founder Cassie Stewart's husband's law office.
Shoaib Ibrahimi (center back) holds his son, Kiumars, 1, as Jackie Claudet-Mitterer (center right) and Cassie Stewart (right) take off their shoes and say hello at Ibrahimi’s apartment in Dallas, on Friday, Feb. 21, 2025. The Rio Valley Relief Project helped Ibrahimi’s family when he came to Dallas from Afghanistan in 2021 and supplied him with furniture, rugs and groceries.
Rebecca Wilson (left), volunteer, types questions into Google Translate, switching between English and French, with a group of Central African refugees while trying to figure out what items they need in their apartment in Dallas, Texas, on Saturday, Feb. 8, 2025. These group came into the U.S. in December, weeks before President Trump took office and placed a ban on any refugees coming into the country.
Cassie Stewart (bottom right) shows Abakar Ahmat (top right) how to assemble a vacuum while Jackie Claudet-Mitterer (left) shows Raoul Ahmat (center left) where the closest Walmart is and Jenna Dobyns (center), of Church World Service, talks to Mahmat Saleh (back) in Dallas, on Thursday, Feb. 6, 2025.
Raoul Ahmat (left) and Abakar Ahmat (center) carry a new TV given to them by the Rio Valley Relief Project up the stairs to their apartment in Dallas, on Saturday, Feb. 8, 2025.
Jenna Dobyns (center), of Church World Service, calls her husband as she tries to fix the TV of Raoul Ahmat (right) as Claudet-Mitterer (right) and Mahmat Saleh (left) watch in Ahmat’s apartment in Dallas, on Thursday, Feb. 6, 2025. Dobyns was one of few workers at CWS that was not laid off.
Carla Bayona (center right) talks to Cassie Stewart (right), Rebecca Wilson (center left) and Jackie Claudet-Mitterer (left) while on the phone with Church World Service while planning how to help refugee families at La Casita Coffee in Dallas, on Friday, Feb. 21, 2025.
Jackie Claudet-Mitterer (left) and Rebecca Wilson (center), volunteers, purchase household essentials for the Saleh family at Walmart in Dallas, on Saturday, Feb. 8, 2025. They rely on monetary donations to be able to make grocery trips like this.
Cassie Stewart, founder of the Rio Valley Relief Project, poses for a portrait in her home in Dallas, on Wednesday, March 12, 2025. “I hope that we always find the ones who need us the most and there’s always a refugee that needs something – that needs help,” Stewart said.
Jackie Claudet-Mitterer cleans up her art work station to show a piece she is working on in her home in Dallas, on Friday, March 7, 2025. When Claudet-Mitterer sells a piece of her art, all of the profits she receives goes to support and fund the the Rio Valley Relief Project.
Raoul Ahmat (left), Abakar Ahmat (center) and Mahmat Saleh (right) all prepare to walk to a mosque for prayer in Dallas on Friday, April 4, 2025.
Rebecca Wilson (left), hands Moussa Saleh (center), 1, a pillow while bringing donated items to his family in their apartment in Dallas, on Saturday, Feb. 8, 2025.
Kiumars Ibrahimi, 1, watches Cocomelon in his family’s apartment in Dallas, on Friday, Feb. 21, 2025.
