The Trump Administration Is Considering A Change To Allow Zero Refugees To Enter The United States
President Donald Trump and his administration are reportedly mulling over a change that would cut the number of refugees admitted in the United States down to zero next year, according to a Politico report.
The Trump administration already cut the number of refugees allowed into the United States by a third this year to 30,000, per Politico.
The Department of Homeland Security meanwhile pitched setting a cap at somewhere between 3,000 and 10,000 refugees per year.
According to a CNN report Friday, the proposal has already received pushback from government officials.
The proposal was mentioned at a meeting last week that took place in Washington with 20 government officials at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, per CNN.
The cap was suggested by a representative for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (UCIS), who per Politico, works closely with, Stephen Miller, an advisor on immigration to the President.
Earlier Friday the president had what some described as an “unreal” non-reaction when meeting with 2018 Nobel Peace Prize co-winner Nadia Murad. Murad reportedly explained that her parents and other family members were killed as part of the ISIS-led genocide of the Yazidi religious minority in Iraq in 2014.
According to a previous report from The Inquisitr, the president seemed unfamiliar with the conflict and had a bored reaction to Murad’s pleas for U.S. assistance for the Yazidi people, who have been displaced from their homeland since the genocide.
Trump has spent much of the week sparring with Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar over comments he made on Twitter telling her and three other members of Congress to “go home” to their ancestral countries. While the other representatives were all born in the U.S., Omar was born in Somalia and came to the United States as a refugee when she was a child.
Stephen Miller said “I would be happy if not a single refugee foot ever again touched American soil.”
Confronted w this in January, WH said “It's certainly not the policy of the administration."
— Omar C. Jadwat (@OmarJadwat) July 19, 2019
According to the Politico report, UCIS officials John Zadrozny and Andrew Veprek, who work at the State Department said that the number of refugees allowed into the country should be low due to security concerns with refugees and the capabilities of the U.S. asylum program.
According to a Business Insider report from earlier this year, the Trump administration has admitted the fewest number of refugees than any other administration in decades. In 2018, the United States took in 22,491 refugees, which is just a fraction of an estimated 68.5 million people worldwide who were forced from their homes.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated that as of 2016, less than one percent of the world’s refugees had been able to safely resettle in a new country. About half of those, it estimated, settled in the United States, which is one of 37 countries that offer assistance to refugees through resettlement programs.
CNN reported that earlier in the week the Trump administration placed restrictions barring most Central Americans from receiving asylum in the United States.
