Flow of refugees to U.S. declines

Trump’s travel ban, State Dept. efforts slow tide

The number of refugees coming to the U.S. dropped to one of the lowest levels in years after President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting their arrivals and banning travel from certain mostly Muslim nations went into effect in late January, according to a report released Thursday.

Federal judges quickly blocked that order, and a revised version that was subsequently issued has also been blocked. But the brief time the orders were in effect, combined with an apparent effort by the State Department to slow the flow, has put the country on track to receive the fewest refugees since 2012, advocates said.

In the administration’s latest setback over the

so-called travel ban, a Virginia federal appeals court on Thursday refused to reinstate the modified order, saying it discriminated on the basis of religion. That likely punts one of Trump’s trademark issues to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Despite the nation’s overall plunge in resettlement, Texas still received the most refugees in the country after California, roughly 3,900, according to State Department data analyzed by the Pew Research Center, a think tank in Washington, D.C. A third of the state’s refugees were settled in Houston.

Refugee arrivals have been on the decline since the beginning of the fiscal year in October, dropping from more than 9,900 to about 7,400 in December.

But advocates said it’s normal for admissions to slow at the start of the financial year, and that the drop came after a particularly strong push from President Barack Obama’s administration to resettle more refugees by year’s end in September.

What was unusual was that the consecutive monthly decline not only continued but fell precipitously, from more than 6,700 in January to 2,070 in March — marking the lowest number of monthly arrivals since October 2013. Little more than 1,800 refugees were resettled that year.

In all, lower refugee arrivals have only occurred in 18 of the months since October 2000, when the State Department began collecting such statistics.

“We’ve never seen a reduction in January, February, March like that,” said Jen Smyers, director of policy and advocacy at Church World Service, one of nine national resettlement agencies contracted by the federal government.

“It clearly was not just the executive orders, but having a new administration that is deprioritizing resettlement.”

A big impact

After judges halted the president’s programs in February and March, national resettlement rose slightly to 3,316 in April. The country has accepted a total of more than 42,400 refugees since October.

Though the executive orders were only briefly implemented before being swept up in litigation, they had a big impact, Smyers said, reducing resettlement to about 65,000 refugees this year if it continues at the current pace.

That is almost half of the 110,000 goal set by President Barack Obama for 2017 and lower than the 85,000 who were resettled in 2016.

It’s also lower than the average annual refugee admissions target of 95,000 since the U.S. Refugee Act of 1980, which provided systematic procedures for refugee arrivals, Smyers said.

And it’s on par with resettlement just five months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, when admissions were halted to the single digits before climbing to more than 2,000 in January 2002, according to State Department data.

Even right after the attacks, President George W. Bush’s administration continued processing refugee applications, though they barely trickled in for the first few months.

By contrast, Trump’s executive orders would completely shut down resettlement for 120 days while security procedures are reviewed.

Upon resumption, he said he would cap the number of refugees accepted this year at 50,000, and at first said he would prioritize those claiming religious persecution if they are from a minority religion, which in Muslim countries is likely Christianity.

In the revised travel ban, which attempted to address judicial problems with the first, Trump also issued a 90-day suspension of entry for anyone from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

Trump removed Iraq from the list after objections from military leaders who argued the U.S. had an obligation to protect their Iraqi translators who have served alongside them for more than a decade. He also struck a complete ban on Syrian refugees and took out specific references to religion.

As part of considering whether the executive orders violate the constitution by discriminating against Muslims, federal judges have also prevented the refugee cap from going into effect.

“The courts have found so far that setting that number to 50,000 is part and parcel of a Muslim ban,” Smyers said.

More refugees in Texas

The State Department said in a statement that Obama’s goal of 110,000 refugees is a “ceiling on refugee admissions, it is not a mandatory target.”

“We have adjusted the pace of refugee arrivals in conformity with Department of Justice guidance regarding the Court Order and consistent with our operational capacity under available funding,” a spokeswoman said.

In Texas, more refugees have arrived so far this year than in 2016, State Department data shows. Between October and May, 4,157 refugees were resettled statewide and 1,162 in Houston — a 10 percent and 19 percent increase, respectively.

That’s because refugee allocations are planned months in advance, Smyers said.

In all, the process of resettlement can take two to three years while applicants go through intensive and laborious background checks.

And though Gov. Greg Abbott withdrew the state from the federal refugee resettlement program last fall, citing security concerns about Syrians, 428 from that war-ravaged country have arrived in Texas this fiscal year, compared to just 148 last year.

The federal government has jurisdiction over refugee resettlement and now simply contracts with private charities rather than working through the state government.

Despite the overall increase in refugees, thanks largely to a bump at the beginning of the fiscal year, the number resettled in Texas similarly declined almost every month.

It fell from 1,096 in October to just 94 in March, before rising again to 351 in April.

Ali Al Sudani, director of refugee services at Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston, said his organization resettled half of their refugees, 180, in the first quarter between October and December. That plummeted to 116 in the second quarter and just 60 during April and May.

“These refugees were in the process of coming to the U.S., then it’s like, ‘No. Now yes,’” he said. “When everything is in limbo that delays the whole process.”

Security checks expire after several weeks so many had to redo the process, which can take months, and are still waiting, he said.

Jeff Watkins, vice president for global initiatives at the YMCA of Greater Houston, said they are also on pace to receive the target amount of refugees this year, noting that they have resettled 636 compared to 464 during the same period in 2016.

‘A chilling effect’

Still the public discourse over the issue has had a “chilling effect,” he said, not only on refugees but on employees, many whom are former refugees themselves. Limiting or stalling arrivals also threatens to divide families, Watkins said.

“Most of the resettlement we do here in Houston is family-based, it’s really reuniting relatives,” he said.

Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, an organization pushing to reduce immigration, said the mass scale of refugees around the world means the U.S. must work with countries to find solutions other than resettlement.

Mehlman said recent events in Western Europe indicate that refugees might also pose dangers here.

“Having fewer people come means you can devote more time and resources vetting the people who are admitted,” he said.