Maine will end its transitional housing program for asylum seekers by the end of September, citing budget constraints and declined arrivals. 

“The state decided to conclude the program in September 2025. Thus, no new asylum seekers have moved in since January 2025 and emphasis has been on helping remaining families secure rental housing,” said Catholic Charities in a statement. The organization is contracted by MaineHousing to provide case management services, English classes and help eligible asylum seekers find work. 

Since 2022, more than 700 asylum seekers — people who have applied for asylum in the United States and are waiting to have their cases heard by a judge — have been housed at a hotel in Saco. With the lease ending in September, organizations are assisting the remaining 29 families in finding housing.

Another transitional housing facility in South Portland closed in June of last year. The two sites served nearly 1,000 people over the past three years, according to a state report released in January.

The program stopped accepting new referrals from the City of Portland in January. Since then, more than 50 families have left the Saco hotel to move into rental housing, with many settled in Biddeford, Auburn and Lewiston, among other cities. Julie Allaire, chief program officer at Catholic Charities, said the program is on pace to find housing for all the remaining families by the end of lease in September. 

The three-year Saco program, including the hotel lease and case management by Catholic Charities, cost $19 million in total. The program was financed through the Emergency Housing Relief Fund, a one-time housing state grant created to relieve strains on the Maine shelter system after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Scott Thistle, director of communications for MaineHousing, said that the funding for transitional housing was not renewed by the state legislature beyond the conclusion of the Saco lease. 

Jessica Grondin, director of communications and digital services at the City of Portland, said an initial proposal that would have consolidated the Chestnut Street and Riverside Shelters was rejected by the Portland City Council. The fate of the Chesnut Street family shelter, which currently houses 35 families, 32 of whom are seeking asylum, is uncertain at this time.

Portland opened two shelters in 2023 specifically for asylum seekers, who had previously been looking for services at the city’s other shelter. 

“We established the [shelter] on Riverside to serve just asylum seekers, because the wraparound services that that population needs is different from the other homeless individuals that we serve at the Homeless Services Center.”

A new rule adopted by the Maine Department of Health and Human Services this spring that clarified how the state will reimburse for emergency shelters will likely mean funding for Portland shelters being slashed nearly in half, according to reporting by the Portland Press Herald. 

Without the transitional housing programs, the cost of providing emergency housing for asylum seekers would likely have been borne by municipalities and the state’s General Assistance program, according to the January report. 

“The [transitional housing] model was undertaken at a time when the volume of new arrivals was higher, and state revenues were capable of sustaining the property leases and service contracts that lead to successful program outcomes,” the authors wrote. “Maine’s budget picture and the inflow of new Mainers has since changed.”

Dramatic decline in number of refugees, asylum seekers in Maine 

Catholic Charities said they have seen a dramatic decline in the numbers of incoming asylum seekers since January, when President Trump suspended refugee admissions indefinitely via executive order (although the administration did fast-track applications from a group of White South Africans it claimed were being persecuted by their government.) Grondin also says that the City of Portland has not seen as many new asylum seekers, although the city does not track the exact number of arrivals. 

The executive order has been challenged in federal court, but admissions are still suspended. Border policies have also made it more challenging for asylum seekers to enter the U.S., and a spike in raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement Officers, along with other potential federal changes, have likely also made the U.S. less attractive to those seeking asylum. 

Asylum and refugee resettlement are two main legal immigration pathways into the U.S. for those fleeing from persecution and violence in their home country. Refugees are accepted into the U.S. after a rigorous screening process which includes medical exams, interviews and security screening, all of which take place before a person arrives in the U.S.

The number of refugees allowed into the country each year is set by the president, typically in consultation with Congress, with ranges for particular regions. After they arrive, refugees are connected with a resettlement agency (Maine’s primary designated agency is Catholic Charities).

According to the data from the Office of Maine Refugee Services at Catholic Charities, Maine resettled close to 700 refugees in fiscal year 2024, which ran from Oct. 1, 2023 through Sept. 30, 2024. The number was a massive increase from just 113 refugees in fiscal year 2022, when OMRS began to publish the resettlement data.

Nearly 3.7 million refugees have been resettled nationally since the 1970s, according to federal immigration data. 

While refugee resettlement is planned, there is no standard pathway for asylum seekers, who apply for asylum after arriving in the U.S. Federal law mandates asylum seekers wait at least six months after applying for asylum before they are eligible for work authorization. Of those housed at the hotel in Saco the vast majority — 90 percent — of those who were eligible to work were doing so, according to the January report.

Despite the slowdown in arrivals, nonprofit organizations around the state said that the demand for assistance with asylum seekers is not zero. Martha Stein, executive director at the Portland-based nonprofit Hope Acts, which offers housing and resources specifically for asylum seekers, said their walk-in services still assist 20 to 30 people a day with work permit applications, signing up for benefits (they are eligible for certain state benefits while their cases are pending) and general questions about immigration and housing.

After receiving work authorization, asylum seekers often wait years to hear whether they have been granted asylum. There are two types of asylum processes, the affirmative and defensive. In Maine, asylum seekers who are in deportation proceedings can request defensive asylum in the Boston and Chelmsford immigration courts in Massachusetts.

Those who are not in deportation proceedings, including those who are still on a temporary legal status like a travel visa, can apply for affirmative asylum with the asylum office in Boston under the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. 

The immigration courts and the asylum office both have a large backlog of pending cases. Last year 46 percent of people who had their cases heard in the Boston immigration courts were granted asylum; a 2022 FOIA request by American Civil Liberties Union of Maine found that the Boston asylum office has one of the lowest asylum approval rates in the country. 

With the shrinking of already limited services and shift in immigration policies, many asylum seekers are anxious about what’s to come, said Catholic Charities in a statement. 

“The main goal of our transitional housing program from the beginning was to prepare families for successful integration into their new community…Where we once emphasized on long-term goals, we are now focusing on more immediate needs such as housing stability.”

The existing support network — a patchwork of organizations, state and local governments and volunteers — is threatened by both federal and state level budget cuts. 

“We like to say that our volunteers kind of pick up where a caseworker ends,” said Jon Godbout, executive director of the Capital Area New Mainers Project, which primarily assists refugees. 

He is worried about the impact of staff layoffs at resettlement agencies on his organization. “But what happens if there’s no more caseworker from the resettlement agency anymore, and that family is not getting that kind of support? That is a big fear of mine.” 

The sweeping legislation recently signed by President Trump will also further restrict programs available to refugees, including restricting eligibility for SNAP, Medicaid, Medicare, Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and Affordable Care Act for refugees who do not yet have green cards.

The drastic cuts targeting refugee resettlement are already having downstream effects on the support system for asylum seekers, said Martha Stein at Hope Acts. With other organizations’ federal funding getting slashed, grant applications are becoming much more competitive for community organizations like hers, whose asylum seeker housing and assistance operations rely largely on grants and private donations. 

Despite funding challenges, community leaders say they are committed to navigate the new environment and to support the refugees and asylum seekers arriving in Maine. 

“I am in this work for humanitarian reasons, but I also know that the people that I’m helping…are really critical to our state’s economic and health and our culture and everything else that makes Maine a really great place to live,” Stein said. 

This story was originally published by The Maine Monitor, a nonprofit civic news organization. To get regular coverage from The Monitor, sign up for a free Monitor newsletter here.