Trump cut the refugee program before. Refugee groups prepare for Round 2.
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Sarah Matusek Staff writer
| Denver
The United States just spent a year resettling more refugees than it has in three decades. The next president may soon reverse that work.
The U.S. admitted just over 100,000 refugees last fiscal year, less than 1% of refugees identified by the United Nations worldwide. Yet those arrivals are still more than the U.S. has resettled annually since 1994.
Why We Wrote This
President-elect Donald Trump says he’ll halt refugee resettlement when he returns to office. Refugee groups are taking action on lessons learned during Mr. Trump’s first term, when the program was significantly downsized.
Under President Joe Biden, the State Department rebuilt the refugee program after it was dramatically downsized by the pandemic and cuts during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term. As he returns to office, Mr. Trump has signaled a plan to suspend refugee resettlement. He’s mentioned it on social media, and raised it on the campaign trail.
In response, resettlement agencies are preparing for reprisal, including seeking alternative funding streams and brainstorming ways to bolster public support. Among those in preparation mode is Maggie Mitchell Salem, executive director at Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services in Connecticut.
“In some ways, we’re better prepared now than we were in 2017,” says Ms. Mitchell Salem. “Now we know to very much take the incoming administration at its word.”
The United States just spent a year resettling more refugees than it has in three decades. The next president may soon reverse that work.
The U.S. admitted just over 100,000 refugees last fiscal year, less than 1% of refugees identified by the United Nations worldwide. Yet those arrivals are still more than the U.S. has resettled annually since 1994.
Under President Joe Biden, the State Department rebuilt the refugee program after it was dramatically downsized by the pandemic and cuts during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term. As he returns to office, Mr. Trump has signaled a plan to suspend refugee resettlement. He’s mentioned it on social media, and raised it on the campaign trail.
Why We Wrote This
President-elect Donald Trump says he’ll halt refugee resettlement when he returns to office. Refugee groups are taking action on lessons learned during Mr. Trump’s first term, when the program was significantly downsized.
“On Day 1 of the Trump presidency, I will restore the travel ban, suspend refugee admissions, stop the resettlement, and keep the terrorists the hell out of our country,” Mr. Trump told a Minnesota crowd last summer.
In response, resettlement agencies are preparing for reprisal, including seeking alternative funding streams and brainstorming ways to bolster public support. Among those in preparation mode is Maggie Mitchell Salem, executive director at Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services (IRIS) in Connecticut.
“In some ways, we’re better prepared now than we were in 2017,” says Ms. Mitchell Salem. “Now we know to very much take the incoming administration at its word.”
“Realities of 2025”
Modern refugee resettlement is a bipartisan creation of Congress by way of the Refugee Act of 1980. Refugees are fleeing identity-based persecution, or fear of persecution. Unlike asylum-seekers, who may apply for asylum once they reach the U.S., refugees are approved for protection here before they arrive.
As such, refugees are considered the most heavily vetted immigrants to enter the U.S. Yet Mr. Trump and other conservatives have continued to raise security concerns.
At the start of his first term, Mr. Trump temporarily suspended refugee resettlement, calling for a review of refugee processing to guard against security threats.
Later, Mr. Trump brought refugee admissions caps to historic lows, and signed an executive order requiring local jurisdictions to opt in to accepting refugees.
Mr. Trump also issued a “travel ban,” which critics said targeted countries with large Muslim populations. (After a tangle of litigation, a version of the policy was upheld in court.) Anticipating a new travel ban that may be issued as soon as Jan. 20, several colleges are urging international students to return to campus before Mr. Trump’s inauguration.
If confirmed as secretary of state, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, would oversee refugee issues. Senator Rubio co-signed a letter to President Joe Biden last year with concerns that a reported plan to admit refugees from Gaza posed “a national security risk.”
A spokesperson for the senator declined an interview request.
While Mr. Trump has talked about curbing certain legal paths into the U.S., he has mostly focused on halting illegal immigration. Border Patrol encounters, a proxy for illegal border crossings, spiked to record highs under the current White House. Conservatives have also decried the Biden administration’s expanded use of short-term immigration pathways like parole and temporary protected status.
“What happens is when you abuse the entire system, the way the Biden-Harris administration has done, is that you reduce the tolerance of the American public” for programs like refugee resettlement, says Ira Mehlman, media director at the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
The country’s refugee and asylum policy, created during the Cold War, is also due for review, he says. “We need to look at it in light of the realities of 2025 – not 1980.”
For some refugees, the reality of 2025 means a hit to their hopes for family members to join them in the U.S.
Refugees weigh in
At a community gathering in Denver late last year, volunteers piled turkey atop paper plates. For many refugees convened at the church, it was likely their first Thanksgiving meal in the United States.
A brother and sister in their 20s from Afghanistan sat together in a sea of tables. He said that he wants to become a doctor. She says that she’d like to own a business.
The pair worries, though, about their three siblings left behind, who they hope can join them here.
“It’s really bringing a lot of stress and anxiety to our family, because we are all worried about what’s going to happen next,” the brother says in his language, Dari.
The next president deciding that refugees and immigrants are no longer welcome wouldn’t make sense, he adds. “We can bring a lot of variety of jobs and different kinds of ideas to this country.”
Waiting in limbo
As of November, a resettlement processing center in Bangladesh run by the International Rescue Committee had refugees waiting in limbo.
“We have clients there that have been security checked, that have all their paperwork done, but that now have to wonder, will they ever be able to come?” says Hans Van de Weerd, senior vice president of asylum and integration.
The future of a program called Welcome Corps, that allows for private sponsorship of refugees by everyday Americans, is also unclear. More than 100,000 people applied to sponsor refugees through the Biden administration initiative.
Welcome Corps sponsor Jaime Polk applied to unite an Afghan family of refugees with their relatives, who she had previously helped resettle in Connecticut.
“We’re patiently waiting,” says Ms. Polk. “Obviously, we are quite anxious.” She says the Afghan family still abroad has been displaced in Pakistan.
If the Welcome Corps ends under the next president, Americans’ willingness to help doesn’t have to go to waste, says Mr. Van de Weerd. He suggests reworking the program to support the refugees already here.
Financial pressures
Resettlement agencies are preparing for potential funding cuts – at a moment when their caseloads have swelled. Local affiliates typically receive federal funding allocated per refugee served.
Inspiritus, a nonprofit active in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee, welcomed the arrival of 1,300 refugees and special immigrant visa holders over the past fiscal year. The agency is still serving many of those people through integration services such as career development and after-school programing.
“We anticipate that funding for those other services is going to be also reduced, but yet we still have a lot of people that need our services,” says Aimee Zangandou, executive director of refugee and immigrant services. That’s why she and others in the sector are seeking out more private grants.
What exactly will happen with refugee arrivals – on Mr. Trump’s Day 1 and beyond – remains unclear. The president-elect’s transition team did not directly respond to requests for clarification.
At IRIS in Connecticut, Ms. Mitchell Salem says she wants to better explain her agency’s work to the public by deepening community engagement and has been arranging town halls. She says it’s important to explain why refugees help the economy – especially as populations age and states need help filling jobs.
“We’re losing the public information battle … we’ve left people behind on pocketbook concerns,” she says. “And this election, I think, was about a lot of pocketbook concerns.”
At the Thanksgiving dinner in Denver, Ron Buzard, managing director at the African Community Center, which convenes this annual event, says he’s working on contingency plans with community partners.
“We’re all concerned,” says Mr. Buzard. Refugee resettlement isn’t just “the right thing to do, but an obligation of countries like ours.”
