Zabi Sahibzada, refugee resettlement director for Jewish Social Services (JSS) in Madison, Wisconsin, has lived through war, displacement, the collapse of Afghanistan and the cataclysmic consequences of shifting U.S. policies abroad and at home.

Today, even as our country plunges into a new war in the Middle East, the Trump administration has pulled back from its commitments to people who helped the U.S. during the long, brutal war in Afghanistan. 

Sahibzada talks to his family every day as they cope with the hardships of living under Taliban rule. He had hoped to bring his family to the U.S. as part of a family reunification program for people who helped our country in Afghanistan. But that program was suspended by President Donald Trump. Now his family is in limbo. He is particularly concerned about his two daughters, ages 18 and 11, who can no longer go to school because of the ban on education for girls. 

Meanwhile, Sahibzada is managing a program that has been severely disrupted by the Trump administration, which set a record-low refugee admissions ceiling of only 7,500 people for Fiscal Year 2026 — down from 125,000 the previous year — with most slots reserved for white South Africans. JSS is no longer resettling hundreds of refugees from around the world in South Central Wisconsin. Instead, the group is focused on continuing to serve the people it has already resettled here. Part of that work involves fielding panicked calls from people who are losing their status as the Trump administration strips protections from those who fled to the U.S. seeking a safe haven from persecution.

Because of funding cuts, JSS, which traces its roots to the Madison Welfare Fund, created in 1940 to help resettle Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust, has had to let go of most of its staff. “Currently we have three full-time case managers that are working with a huge population that’s already here, and we cannot afford more,” Sahibzada said.

JSS works with about 450 people, most of them in Dane County. Among the services the group provides are help with finding employment, health care, housing, language instruction and financial assistance for up to five years. The organization is scrambling to raise money privately to make up for the loss of federal funds. 

Sahibzada estimates that staff salaries cost JSS about $300,000 per year, with another $250,000 going to cover direct assistance for clients — but that amount rises and falls depending on need. This year, he expects need to rise significantly because of Trump administration policies, including the cancellation of Temporary Protected Status for people from Afghanistan and Haiti. 

“Those people, they’re not having documents anymore to work,” he said. “They’re losing their job, they’re losing their driving license, they cannot renew it. And then those will be knocking on our doors that they may need a lot of help … they’ll not be able to pay their rents, they’ll not be able to receive any other benefits from the government. And by the next few months, there will be cuts to health insurance. They’ll be cut from the food assistance or the cash assistance that a lot of people were depending on. So they will be coming and knocking on our doors, and that’s the gap that we may need to fill with the help from the communities.”

The gap, he estimates, will likely be between $300,000 and $400,000.

“I would say it’s a very chaotic moment for all the refugees and immigrants in the country,” Sahibzada said during a recent interview in his office on the west side of Madison.

Confronting chaos is, unfortunately, a familiar experience for Sahibzada.

A perilous escape from Afghanistan

Before he came to the United States from Afghanistan in 2022 on a special immigrant visa, Sahibzada worked for USAID in Afghanistan for more than a decade. As a software engineer, he helped create a text-messaging system that allowed farmers to get timely information about agricultural markets, and he was the main point of contact for people in rural areas in his region who wanted to get in touch with USAID-funded projects. “My name was the contact person on billboards and brochures and reference cards,” he said. “Everyone in the community knew my name. They knew my face.” 

That was a dangerous position to be in as the Taliban came back into power. Even before the U.S. withdrawal and the Taliban’s resurgence, Sahibzada began receiving threatening calls and social media warnings. He was approved for a special immigrant visa for Afghans who worked with the U.S. government — a program President Donald Trump suspended this year — but he had no idea how he would get out of the country, he said. The U.S. government offered to help him relocate to Doha, Qatar. 

“That was a time where it was not easy to go through the custom borders in Afghanistan, like, through the airport,” he said.  “I was afraid, like … how can I just go and will they allow me, or will they just keep me in prison, or will they just, I don’t know what will happen to me.”

“Thankfully, I made it to the airplane,” he said. He attributes his escape in part to the fact that he used an unfamiliar, formal name on his passport. “When I was working with USAID, my name was Sunny, which is like my nickname,” he explained. But on his passport, “I just put my last name as Sahibzada, which is our family name. So that helped me. When I was going to the airport, I was like, OK, whatever they’re having on their list will be not similar as what I have on my passport.” As a result, he thinks, he was able to slip past the Taliban and fly to Doha and from there, after a month-long process of vetting and background checks, to Wisconsin, where he has been living and working since December 2022. 

After resettling in Madison, Sahibzada got a job with the Milwaukee transit system, and commuted to work for a couple of months. He started at JSS in 2023 as a program manager and was promoted this year to direct the resettlement program.

During the time he has worked at JSS, much has changed.

A lot of clients call JSS with legal questions, worried that they might be deported. “We are connecting them with legal service providers,” Sahibzada said, “because we cannot answer.”

The group is planning “know your rights” and emergency preparedness training sessions for April, and working on creating a hotline for ICE sightings, staffed by volunteers speaking multiple languages, coordinated statewide with Wisconsin’s eight refugee services agencies.

Meanwhile, Sahibzada calls home every morning and evening to talk with his family, including his parents, his wife and his two daughters and three sons. “It’s really hard just staying home, not going out, and not going to school,” he said of his daughters. When he talks to them, “They’re always asking me, ‘What’s gonna happen?’ And I’m just giving them sometimes, like some false hopes that it will get better, which I don’t think it will in the very near future, but this is the hope that I’m giving.”

His family, seeking to join him in the U.S., traveled to Pakistan during the Biden administration and waited for months to have their papers processed by the U.S. embassy there. But their visas expired and they were forced to return to Afghanistan. Now, with the new U.S. immigration restrictions, things have gotten even more difficult. Sahibzada continues to hold out hope that things will eventually improve.

 “I’m hopeful that it gets changed, either with this administration or any other administration in the future,” he said. “I’m hopeful that this will change and people will be turning back to their normal life.”

More information about making a donation or volunteering is available on the JSS website

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WASHINGTON — Republicans on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee mounted unusually blunt criticisms of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during a tense five-hour hearing Tuesday, with North Carolina’s Thom Tillis threatening to obstruct the chamber’s business if Noem did not answer questions from his office about immigration enforcement. 

Tillis even revisited a book written by Noem in which she famously detailed shooting a pet dog as well as a goat, comparing her actions in that instance with drawing too-hasty conclusions in the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens by immigration agents in Minneapolis.

The oversight hearing was Noem’s first appearance on Capitol Hill since the months-long immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis, during which agents of her department killed the two citizens and the surge was later scaled back amidst a national uproar.

Tillis, a Republican who is retiring rather than seeking reelection this year, focused his critique on Noem’s handling of immigration, while other GOP members raised separate concerns. At times, he raised his voice.

“We expect exceptional leadership and you’ve demonstrated anything but that,” Tillis said. “What we’ve seen is a disaster under your leadership. What we’ve seen is innocent people getting detained that turn out are American citizens.”

He castigated Noem for not admitting her mistake in labeling Renee Good, a poet and mother of three, and Alex Pretti, an intensive care unit nurse, as domestic terrorists. Good and Pretti both died in January from gunshots fired by federal immigration agents.

Tillis called for Noem’s resignation, and threatened that if she did not answer multiple questions submitted by his office, he would hold up en bloc nominations that come to the floor and deny quorum in Senate committees. Tillis’ absence from committee markups could grind those panels’ work to a halt, pausing nominations and party line bills.

Democrats on the panel questioned Noem about the Minneapolis operation, racial profiling by immigration officers that has led to the arrests of U.S. citizens, and whether immigration agents will be at polling locations in the midterm elections.

Noem largely stood by her decisions, and, when she was grilled by senators about the aggressive tactics by her immigration agent, she pivoted to the families behind her, known as angel families, who have had loved ones killed by an immigrant in the country without legal authorization. 

“These poor angel families behind me will never have their children again, that’s one of my motivations every day,” Noem said.

Republicans John Kennedy of Louisiana and Josh Hawley of Missouri quizzed Noem on a $220 million advertising contract and the slow response from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for reimbursements and disaster assistance.

The dog and the goat

Tillis did not ask Noem any questions. Instead, for his full 10 minutes allocated for questions, he said he was giving her a “performance review,” during which he expressed multiple frustrations.

He criticized her handling of the operation in Minnesota.

“The fact that you can’t admit to a mistake, which looks like, under investigation, is going to prove that Miss Good and Mr. Pretti probably should not have been shot in the face and in the back,” Tillis said. 

After Pretti’s death, President Donald Trump instructed Tom Homan, the White House border czar who reports directly to the president and operates outside of DHS’ chain of command, to take over operations in Minneapolis. 

Tillis told Noem that he read her book, in which she details how she shot and killed a 14-month-old dog named Cricket for bad behavior. She also revealed she killed a goat for similar reasons. 

“You decided to kill that dog because you had not invested the appropriate time and training, and then you have the audacity to go into a book and say it’s a leadership lesson about tough choices,” Tillis said.

He also took issue with the goat.

“If you don’t castrate a goat, they behave badly,” he said. 

Research indicates that neutering a goat can lead to lower testosterone levels and mellow out an aggressive goat. 

“My point is, those are bad decisions made in the heat of the moment, not unlike what happened up in Minneapolis,” he said, referring to how quick Noem was to label Pretti and Good as domestic terrorists. 

Slow FEMA relief

Tillis pointed to how a policy Noem started at FEMA, in which she must personally approve any contract that is more than $100,000, has led to delay in his state that is still reeling from Hurricane Helene in 2024.

“This is what incompetent FEMA leadership looks like,” he said. “People are hurting in western North Carolina from the most significant storm they’ve ever experienced.”

Tillis said Noem had “failed at FEMA” and that he believes she is violating the Homeland Security Act of 2002  that he said “expressly prohibits the secretary of Homeland Security from restricting or diverting FEMA resources from the agency’s mission.”

Hawley also brought up an issue with FEMA.

He said following multiple deadly tornadoes in his state, FEMA was helping fund debris removal. Local officials have estimated roughly 10,000 homes qualify for the removal aid, but “some of the conditions that have been placed on the funds by FEMA mean that only (100) or 200 homes out of those 10,000 can actually get access to FEMA debris removal funds.” 

Noem said she would work with his office to address that issue. 

Advertising contract

Kennedy questioned Noem about her decision to award a no-bid contract for her ad campaign that costs $220 million. A ProPublica investigation found that Noem awarded the contract to the husband of former DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin.

“Look, we all have friends who are qualified, I’m not quibbling with that,” Kennedy said. “It troubles me, … a quarter of a billion dollars in taxpayer money when we’re scratching for every penny and we’re fighting over rescission packages, I just can’t agree with.”

Noem said she was not involved in approving the contract. 

‘They should be alive today’

Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar slammed Noem for the aggressive immigration enforcement operation in her state.

“Two of my constituents, Renee Good and Alex Pretti were killed,” she said. “They should be alive today.”

Klobuchar asked Noem how many federal immigration officers are still in Minneapolis. The Trump administration sent more than 2,000 agents, dwarfing the city’s local police force that stands at roughly 600 officers.

Noem said about 650 immigration agents are still in the city. 

Klobuchar told Noem that she spoke to the parents of Pretti.

“When I spoke to Alex’s parents, they told me that you calling him a domestic terrorist… (was) one of the most hurtful things they could ever imagine was said by you about their son,” Klobuchar said. 

She asked Noem if she wanted to apologize to Pretti’s parents for calling him a domestic terrorist.

“I did not call him a domestic terrorist, I said it appeared to be an incident of domestic terrorism,” Noem said. 

Shutdown and Iran questions

Tuesday was day 17 of a partial shutdown of DHS. Senate Democrats forced the shutdown after the shootings of Good and Pretti.

The department is also now dealing with additional cybersecurity and counterterrorism risks after President Donald Trump ordered airstrikes on Iran.

Though Congress has not passed a fiscal 2026 funding bill for DHS, the department has a separate funding stream, from the tax cuts and spending package Republicans passed last year, to continue immigration enforcement. Nearly all of the department is considered essential, so its employees are continuing to work, some without pay. 

In the days following the Trump administration’s decision to launch an attack on Iran, senators pressed Noem on what security preparations the agency is taking amid the shutdown.

Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley of Iowa said he was concerned about potential terrorism due to the war in Iran. He asked Noem how she was vetting immigrants and intercepting potential acts of terrorism. 

Noem blamed the Biden administration for concerns of terrorism and said the agency was re-vetting all refugees and Afghan allies who fled to the U.S. after the Biden administration’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. 

“We are re-vetting some of the individuals and some of the programs that we may have concerns about, looking at social media, also going through those interviews that are necessary for some of our programs that the Biden administration abused and perverted under their time,” Noem said. 

Republican of South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham asked Noem if she thought the threat level to the U.S. was up or down when it came to terrorism from Iran. 

Noem said it was up. 

Graham has been vocal in his push for the ousting of the current Iranian government. 

“We’re engaged in military action against the mothership of terrorism, Iran, which I hope will sink pretty soon,” Graham said. 

Alabama Sen. Katie Britt, the top Republican on the appropriations panel that funds DHS, asked Noem what the implications of her agency being shut down are.

Britt raised concern about the shooting in Austin, Texas, over the weekend that is being investigated as a possible act of terrorism. 

“We’re continuing to do that work and will every single day, but we need funding to make sure that all of our law enforcement agencies have the tools they (need) to bring them to justice,” Noem said.

Elections

Ahead of November’s midterm elections, Democrats have raised concerns the administration would send immigration officers to polling locations. 

Noem said Tuesday that elections were up to the states to run, but was evasive when asked to rule out sending DHS agents to monitor polling places. 

Sen. Chris Coons asked Noem if she would issue a directive telling ICE agents to not be at election sites. 

Noem didn’t answer the Delaware Democrat’s question but asked, “Do you plan on illegal aliens voting in our elections?”

It’s already illegal for a noncitizen to vote in a federal election and has only rarely happened. 

Trump is pushing for Congress to pass a law to require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.

WASHINGTON — As they seek to curb President Donald Trump’s aggressive approach to immigration enforcement, congressional Democrats are looking to formalize some guidelines previous administrations used.

Of the 10 policy proposals Democratic leaders offered in negotiations to reopen the Department of Homeland Security, which has been in a funding lapse since Feb. 14 in the midst of widespread uproar over the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens by immigration officers in Minneapolis last month, seven have been employed in at least some form by previous administrations.

Democrats are asking the Trump administration to reinstate policies it has rejected in its controversial push to carry out mass deportations. Prior policies Democrats want to formalize include use-of-force standards, allowing unannounced visits by members of Congress to facilities that detain immigrants and obtaining judicial warrants before entering private residences.

“Many of the things the Democrats are asking for are to revert to prior policies,” said Theresa Cardinal Brown, a senior DHS official during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. “Some of them are responding to the ways this administration is carrying out its operations that previous administrations did not.”

Formalizing the policies in law, as part of a deal to pass a fiscal 2026 funding bill for the department, would make them more permanent.

“Policies and guidance … apply as the current leadership applies them,” Cardinal Brown said. “They’re not absolutes, and they can be changed much more frequently.”

But an agreement between congressional Democrats and the White House on changes to immigration enforcement appears elusive. The White House’s response to the proposals was “incomplete and insufficient,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a Feb. 9 statement. 

No recent movement on negotiations

Democrats late Monday sent over a counterproposal to Republicans and the White House, but did not make public what those changes were, according to a statement from party leaders.

While there is bipartisan support for some of the proposals, like requiring body-worn cameras, others, such as barring immigration agents from wearing face coverings and requiring judicial warrants to enter private property, have been rejected outright by the Trump administration.

A White House official said the “Trump Administration remains interested in having good faith conversations with the Democrats.” 

“President Trump has been clear – he wants the government open,” according to the White House official.

Even with the department shut down, immigration enforcement will continue, due to $170 billion in funding in the massive tax cuts and spending package Trump signed into law last year. 

Democrats’ proposals do not include consequences if DHS doesn’t comply, which raises an issue of effectiveness, said Heidi Altman, vice president of policy at the National Immigration Law Center, an advocacy group that aims to provide free or low-cost legal services for immigrants.

“When Congress is negotiating policy measures, are they also putting teeth to those policy measures, and are they yanking away the funds that we know ICE and CBP will use to violate guardrails to begin with?” Altman said.

Changes demanded after Minneapolis deaths

After Renee Good was shot and killed by immigration officer Jonathan Ross on Jan. 7, lawmakers amended the Homeland Security funding bill to add guardrails, such as appropriating $20 million for body cameras and adding a requirement for DHS to report how funds from the tax cuts and spending package are being spent.

But a second death in Minnesota, that of intensive care unit nurse Alex Pretti on Jan. 24, spurred Democrats to reject funding for DHS without stronger policy changes to the enforcement tactics used by immigration officers at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. 

Only three of the 10 proposals from Schumer and Jeffries, both of New York, would be entirely new. 

They are: prohibiting ICE and other immigration enforcement agents from wearing face coverings, barring racial profiling after the Supreme Court cleared the way for the practice last year, and standardizing uniforms of DHS agents.

The heads of ICE and CBP rejected Democrats’ request to have their immigration officers forgo face coverings when asked during an oversight hearing before the House Homeland Security Committee last week. 

Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons and CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott, along with congressional Republicans, have argued that masks and face coverings prevent their officers from being doxed. 

Local cooperation

Other proposals, including barring of immigration enforcement of so-called sensitive locations such as religious places, child care facilities, hospitals and schools, would expand previous DHS guidance that restricted enforcement in such places.

The Democratic proposal calls for enforcement to be prohibited at those sensitive locations. Prior guidance allowed for the practice on a limited basis.

Then-acting ICE Director Caleb Vitello rescinded the policy shortly after President Donald Trump took office in January last year. There are several lawsuits brought by religious groups challenging the move by the Trump administration.

A requirement that immigration officials gain permission from local and state governments before undertaking large enforcement operations like the one in Minneapolis would build on previous policies of federal-local cooperation.

But that measure would be a long shot, Cardinal Brown said.

“I think that’s going to be a hard one,” she said. “The federal government has the authority to enforce immigration law anywhere in the country it wishes.”

She said a more realistic option would be for the federal government to inform or coordinate with local authorities for large-scale immigration operations. 

Another proposed requirement that DHS officials present identification also builds on a previous policy.

Another proposal builds on DHS policy of targeted enforcement by ending “indiscriminate arrests,” without warrants.

Under current immigration law, if an officer encounters a person believed to be in the U.S. unlawfully and can escape before a warrant is obtained, a warrantless arrest is lawful.

Democrats want to increase standards on the forms ICE uses to authorize an arrest. These administrative forms are not signed by a judge but instead by an ICE employee.

Judicial warrants

The remaining proposals would revert DHS policies to those in place under prior administrations’ guidance. Those include use-of-force standards, use of body cameras when interacting with the public, allowing members of Congress unannounced oversight visits at detention centers that hold immigrants and requiring a judicial warrant to enter private property.

An internal ICE memo, obtained by The Associated Press, showed that Lyons instructed ICE agents to enter private residences without a judicial warrant – a departure from longstanding DHS policy.

“This judicial warrant issue is so disturbing,” said Ben Johnson, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, or AILA.  

He said the question of whether a warrant is needed to enter private property was already decided under the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment. 

“The fact that it’s being discussed now is really frightening,” Johnson said.

Body cameras

Providing funds for DHS to acquire body cameras for immigration officers is one proposal Democrats and Republicans seem to have agreed on.

Earlier this month, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced that body cameras would be provided to all immigration agents in Minneapolis, and said that as “funding is available, the body camera program will be expanded nationwide.”

During an oversight hearing on Capitol Hill, Lyons said about 3,000 ICE officers currently have body cameras with another 6,000 cameras on the way. Scott said  roughly 10,000 Border Patrol agents, about half the total force, have body cameras.

But body cameras are not a guarantee against misconduct, Altman said.

CBP officials were wearing body cameras when Pretti was shot and killed. Scott said that footage would be released after the investigation is over.

“We see officers in the field right now wearing body-worn cameras engaging in abuse and violence on the daily,” Altman said. 

Oversight visits

One of the proposals would also end a DHS policy to require members of Congress to provide seven-day notice of oversight visits at facilities that hold immigrants, despite a 2019 appropriations law that allows for unannounced visits.

Since last summer, several lawmakers have been denied oversight visits at ICE facilities prompting them to sue in federal court. 

On the day funding for DHS lapsed, Feb. 14, the Department of Justice submitted a brief, noting that because of the shutdown, unannounced oversight visits by lawmakers can be denied. 

The administration argued that during the shutdown, immigration enforcement has been funded by the tax cuts and spending bill, which does not include language allowing unannounced visits, rather than regular appropriations. 

“There is no lawful basis for the Court to enjoin Defendants’ conduct so long as the restricted funds have lapsed,” according to the document.

The starting line at the 2024 American Birkebeiner ski race in Cable, Wisconsin | Photo by Frank Zufall/Wisconsin Examiner

The 52nd American Birkebeiner, “Birkie,” cross-country ski race between Cable and Hayward, Wisconsin, is scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 21, featuring thousands of skiers from across the United States and several hundred from 16 foreign countries, including  Norway, France, Finland and Germany.

However, according to American Birkebeiner Ski Foundation Executive Director Ben Popp several international participants have called the Birkebeiner office in Hayward to express concerns after the federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota  and the death of Minneapolis residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who were both shot by federal immigration agents.

The Birkebeiner course in northwestern Wisconsin is close to the Minneapolis-St. Paul international airport. So far, Popp said, the Birkie doesn’t know if any foreign skiers have canceled their plans to attend the upcoming race, the largest cross-country/Nordic ski race in North America.

“We had people say, ‘Is it safe to fly into Minneapolis?’” said Popp. “I mean it’s no secret, globally speaking, people are looking at the United States in a very different light these days, especially if you’re a foreigner.”

He added, “it’s predominantly people asking questions like, ‘Is it safe to fly to Minneapolis? What’s it like? Should I still come?’ You know, those are kind of the questions I think we’re getting from the foreigners. And, you know, a lot of those are pretty savvy travelers. Typically, it’s like this is not their first international trip.”

Popp said a skier from Slovenia wanted a contract number with the Birkie in case the skier was stopped by immigration officers and questioned why he was in the U.S..

“So those are legitimate questions we’re getting and encouraging them to come,” Popp said. “And certainly there are some crazy things going on, but we think it’s safe to fly into Minneapolis and get to the Northwoods.” 

The Birkie will be able to assess how many skiers  canceled their trips after organizers see  who doesn’t participate in the 50K ski or the 53K classic events. 

“I think there’s certainly an economic impact that can happen if they don’t come,” said Popp. “But, you know, we’re trying to reassure them that we think it is safe to travel, you know, through Minneapolis.”

International tourism to the United States reportedly dropped dramatically  after President Donald Trump took office on January 21, 2025, and voiced an “American First” policy emphasizing a crackdown on immigrants, suspension of foreign visa programs and a tougher foreign-policy and trade stance toward other nations.

Images and videos of ICE officers breaking car windows and dragging people out of their homes, some of whom were immigrants who legally reside in the U.S., as well as the shooting deaths of U.S. citizens Good and Pretti, haven’t played well for international travelers considering visiting the U.S.

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