Health-care workers who treat refugees plan message to Trump administration

Adeb Arianson fled his home in Kabul just days before the capital of Afghanistan fell to the Taliban in 2021, as Western nations were evacuating their citizens and panic seized the city. 

He crossed the border to Tajikistan, where he had to spend a few weeks in a hospital recovering from physical and mental shock. 

"The panic attacks, the thoughts that were coming on and all the pressure of what's going to happen? What am I going to do?" Arianson recalled in a recent interview.

"It was constant panic attacks. It was fear, it was just shock."

Arianson, now 23, eventually arrived in Canada as a government-assisted refugee in 2022. He will be a guest speaker at an international conference in Halifax this weekend, where hundreds of health-care workers are gathering to discuss refugee and migrant health.

Last year, the conference had more than 1,000 attendees, and about 75 per cent of them were from the United States. This year attendance has dropped to about 500.

Many attendees didn't attend because they were afraid of having trouble re-entering the United States — particularly if they were not born there — in the wake of the Trump administration's immigration policies.As well, many agencies had their federal funding cut, said conference organizer Dr. Annalee Coakley.

She said conference attendees are planning to send a message about protection of vulnerable migrants by drafting a statement they are calling the "Halifax Declaration," which they will submit to a major medical journal.

"Patients are very, very fearful if they come from a migrant background," said Coakley, a family doctor who works in Inverness, N.S. She is also the co-director of a research program on refugee health in Calgary.

"Together we have a shared voice, and we share values and so we're hoping to put together a statement in support of refugee and migrant rights, and their right to health," she said.

In January 2025, the Trump administration issued an executive order saying it would suspend the United States Refugee Admission Program for an indefinite period of time.

President Donald Trump called on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to carry out mass deportations, and ended programs that allowed some migrants to live and work in the United States.

Refugees go through a different process, which usually involves being referred for resettlement by the United Nations. 

In the days following the suspension of the refugee admission program, thousands of refugees who were cleared to travel to the U.S. had their plans halted, including Afghan refugees who helped American armed forces when they were based in that country.