And it's good that they're giving them time to transition internally instead of just laying them off. Now the hiring freeze makes more sense, if a team elsewhere is desperate to find an engineer, this is their chance.
It doesn't work like this. If there is a hiring freeze in place, it means that internal headcounts are also limited. The "desperate team elsewhere" must have money to pay for the new engineer.
I've also seen people who had to transfer in a month and couldn't find a team and were simply terminated- because no other team wanted them.