Washington (AP) – President Donald Trump is considering admitting much less refugees in the US Immigration raids sweeps as part of its mass deportation agenda.
The new figures have not been completed by the Donald Trump administration or officially transmitted in a notification to Congress as required by the deadline of last week, according to two people familiar with the situation to whom anonymity was granted because they were not authorized to discuss it with the media.
The decrease in the number of refugees would be a marked deviation from the higher figures traditionally allowed in the United States: the Biden administration last year established an objective of 125,000 refugee admissions. And the defenders warn that those who have already been examined and are waiting for approvals would jump out of the line. Everything occurs when the National Security Department is dedicated to an offensive against immigrants in US cities, including last weekend in Chicago, and recruiting officers with a social media campaign to “recover our national identity.”
“This would be a monumental change in the United States refugee policy, not only in terms of reducing admissions, but also in terms of disproportionately privilege a group about each other,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of the resettlement organization, global refuge.
“Our concern is that this could turn what has long been a worldwide humanitarian system in one that overwhelmingly favors a single group,” Vignarajah said.
Trump suspended the refugee program in January
The refugee program, which once had a generalized bipartisan support, was suspended Trump’s first day in office.
Since then, only a drip of refugees in the country has been admitted, either as part of an ongoing judicial case that seeks to resume the program or as part of a new refugee program for Afrikaners that Trump announced in February. The administration says that South African White farmers face discrimination and violence at home, which the country’s government denies strongly.
The White House said the refugee limit is not final until the administration consults with the Congress, according to an official granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the situation.
The official and one of the other people said that, due to the closure of the federal government, refugees will not be accepted during the new fiscal year, which began on October 1, until the government is reopened, although with the suspended program, few are being left in hand.
Currently, some 128,000 refugees have been approved for resettlement in the United States and are now trapped in Limbo, said Mark Hetfield, president of Hias, the Jewish Resessment Agency of refugees. In addition, 14,000 Jews, Christians and other religious minorities in Iran have been registered for a long time in the refugee program.
“How can a president who claims to defend religious and American values ​​and who claims to support legal and orderly migration to turn his back on so many refugees who followed the rules, while moving the White South Africans at the head of the line?” said.
The expected admissions are lower than the defenders expected
The number of 7,500 is a dramatic reduction in the limits of admission of refugees already historically low that Trump presented during his first term and also well below what the refugee defenders had feared that it would be the goal for the next fiscal year.
In the early September, organizations that help refugees began to sound the alarm that the administration was considering a limit of approximately 30,000, with most of those places reserved for white South Africans.
Administration officials said at that time that the numbers were in flow and would require the sign of the White House, but did not give indications that the total number could be reduced by more than 20,000 of what the defenders had feared.
As the government’s closure was assumed last week, these officials began to say that a final determination would not be taken until Congress has been consulted and that that was unlikely until after the end.
A senior United States official said that a consultation is still required on Saturday and that it would probably not happen until the government returns to work.
But the official also said that 7,500 admissions in the current fiscal year would be “significantly more” than what had been allowed since Trump assumed the position for the second time in January.
Other refugees can be left in limbo
Certain legislators in Congress have been pressing the White House for the official notification, which was required by law by the deadline of September 30.
The classification Democrats in the judicial committees of the Chamber and the Senate who handle immigration matters said that the Trump administration is “challenging the law.”
The refugees are being left in “Limbo”, wrote Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, representative Jamie Rankin of Maryland and other main democrats in the judicial panels in a letter last week. “The consequences are serious.”
They said that thousands of people face persecution abroad “who have already approved the rigorous research requirements” are being languished in refugees, while Trump is “hiding exceptions for South African white farmers, allowing Afrikaners to skip the line.”
__ The Associated Press writer Julie Watson in San Diego and Rebecca Santana in Washington, DC, contributed to this report.
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