From severe cuts to SNAP and Medicaid to the de-legalization of nearly 1 million residents and rising detention rates, Georgia’s immigrant communities and service providers are reeling from the fallout of hundreds of policy changes over the past two years. Leaders working across business, policy, and community sectors gathered at the Coalition of Refugee Service Agencies’ annual “Maximizing Global Talent” event Friday to discuss their insights into the rapidly shifting landscape. Their message is clear: The effects of such policy changes have been quiet but devastating.
Despite housing the largest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center by capacity, Georgia’s immigration enforcement has kept a relatively low profile. This is largely due to the lack of ICE raids or large-scale arrests, as seen in other states such as California and Minnesota across social media and news outlets.
“It’s happened very quietly, but it certainly has been just as destructive,” said Jennifer Lee, policy and advocacy director at Asian Americans Advancing Justice. “Because the policy environment in Georgia encourages and facilitates that through local police departments and sheriffs.”
Many of the detainees taken by ICE are breadwinners for their families. As a result, the increase in detention rates has stripped entire families of their main source of income. This is exacerbated by extreme cuts in work permits and exponential rates of de-legalization. According to Lee, an estimated 1 million people have faced de-legalization in the past two years across the country, which means approximately 1 million people have lost the right to work legally in the United States as a result of recent policy changes.
As legal work authorization vanishes and primary providers are arrested, families are simultaneously stripped of federal safety nets meant to support them. But the impact of recent federal rollbacks – most notably H.R. 1, also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBA) – extends far beyond immigrant communities, stripping food access from over 200,000 Georgians, 8,000 of whom are refugees or immigrants according to the panel.
Priscille Chanssi, senior food security coordinator at New American Pathways, emphasized the barriers that refugees face while trying to access resources, such as language barriers when filling out food pantry forms or lack of transportation. New American Pathways, a refugee resettlement nonprofit, set up its own food box program as a response to these unique barriers and a staggering increase in food insecurity. Government cuts have affected low-income residents statewide, and without traditional safety-net infrastructure, general community members have begun seeking aid from specialized nonprofits.
“We are seeing people come up to us who are not refugees seeking help, which is something that we haven’t seen before,” said Paedia Mixon, CEO of New American Pathways.
Nonprofits such as New American Pathways are attempting to adapt to the increased demand and expanding client pool, but cuts in federal funding mean that service providers are attempting to accommodate a lot more with a lot less. Mixon revealed a shocking statistic: federal funding for New American Pathways plummeted from 23 percent in 2025 to a mere 3 percent.
Mosaic Health Center, a nonprofit clinic that serves uninsured patients in Clarkston, has also experienced the effects of the numerous policy changes, with a 40 percent increase in patient volume. Jeremy Cole, the executive director of Mosaic Health, says that the increase in patients began this past January with the lapse in Affordable Care Act subsidies. That volume spike is expected to worsen under OBBA restrictions.
For the first time in history, newly arrived refugees are ineligible for Medicaid due to new green card mandates. This policy change excludes thousands of asylum seekers and refugees from accessible healthcare, and clinics like Cole’s are feeling the brunt of it.
“The refugee immigrant community is getting hit the hardest,” said Cole. “We see an intentional attack on these communities, an intentional policy environment to make people feel not welcome, and to make people feel like they don’t belong.”
The landscape may look grim, but the policy shifts have also forced a powerful shift in perspective. Inside overwhelmed clinics and food programs, local leaders are reminded that they are stronger together than apart.
“There is a spirit in Clarkston trying to figure out how to work together and it’s been there a long time at CRSA and other coalitions,” Cole said. “That [spirit] continues and is growing because we recognize we have to come together as nonprofits. We can’t solve these massive challenges alone. I’m excited about that.”
That shared spirit was tangible on Friday. Even as federal policy restricts access to food and healthcare — cutting safety nets out from under thousands — local organizations and businesses refuse to let their neighborhoods navigate the crisis alone.
Teresa Lu is currently a Grant Writing Intern with New American Pathways.
