Jalil Dawood, pastor of the Arabic Church of Dallas, thanks God every day for the U.S. government’s refugee resettlement program, which helped him settle in the United States after he fled persecution during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. Dawood, who said the program reflects the best of American values, believes he has President Ronald Reagan to thank for helping to change the course of his life.

“Ronald Reagan helped me make it to America,” Dawood said. On Jan. 24 the Trump administration halted the current resettlement program for refugees, who are legal immigrants vetted by the government, many of them after awaiting resettlement for years. A previous order put a stop to all new arrivals of refugees for the next 90 days.

That is a mistake, said Dawood, an evangelical Christian who holds graduate degrees from Dallas Theological Seminary and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He voted for Donald Trump three times.

Dawood, founder of World Refugee Care, a small Texas nonprofit that provides spiritual and humanitarian support for refugees in the United States and the Middle East, said he understands the president’s concerns about national security. But the refugee resettlement program is not a danger, he said. Instead, it’s a way for the United States to help religious minorities and others facing persecution around the world.

“There are a lot of persecuted Christians,” said Dawood, whose group does not receive any federal funds. Saying he believes the Bible tells Christians to be compassionate to refugees, he added, “There is a real need, and America needs to bless those people, bring them in or help them so they might start a new life. God will bless America for that. And that’s my concern.”

Danilo Zak, director of policy at Church World Service, a faith-based refugee resettlement agency that contracts with the federal government to resettle refugees, said that in the week before Trump’s inauguration alone, more than 5,000 refugees and 1,000 Afghans on Special Immigrant Visas were resettled across the country.

The administration then canceled flights that were supposed to bring in refugees before the Jan. 27 pause. Then it ordered a halt to all assistance for those already here.

Matt Soerens, vice president of advocacy and policy at World Relief, the humanitarian arm of the National Association of Evangelicals, said that faith-based refugee resettlement groups, including World Relief, had expected Trump to put limits on the number of refugees allowed in the United States, as he did in his first term. Those past limits led resettlement groups to lay off staff and close offices, essentially crippling the public-private partnerships that make resettlement work in the United States.

Faith-based refugee agencies operating in the U.S. ramped up their efforts to assist as many refugees as possible before Trump returned to office, fearing he would eliminate the refugee program. But Soerens said World Relief and other groups were caught off guard on Friday by a federal memo instructing them to stop working with refugees already in the United States.

World Relief and other refugee resettlement groups, including Catholic Charities, Church World Service and HIAS, receive federal funding to help refugees. They also raise funds from private donors to assist refugees and recruit volunteers from houses of worship.

That volunteer work will continue, said Soerens, who also said that volunteers and private donations will be needed now more than ever. “I don’t think that the government has any authority to tell us, or any church, don’t bring your refugee friends to the grocery store,” he said. “Or don’t help them go to their medical appointments.”

The president has unilateral authority to set the ceiling on refugee admissions each year. President Biden’s announced target was 125,000 refugees for the current fiscal year, as it was each of the three prior years.

Although refugee resettlement has been a controversial issue over the past decade and a half, World Relief’s work with refugee resettlement has been active ever since it started in the 1970s, when Grady and Evelyn Mangham, former Christian and Missionary Alliance missionaries to Vietnam, organized to assist refugees fleeing the fallout from the end of the Vietnam War.

Faith-based groups that resettle refugees have faced criticism. Dawood said that Christian critics of the refugee program might want to go back to the Bible to read its passages about welcoming refugees, and, citing his hero, Ronald Reagan, said, “America is the city on a hill, and America is to be honored and blessed by accepting those refugees.”