Down Under the radar
Confusing refugee deal approved late by O
The Obama administration’s agreement to take more than 1,000 refugees off the hands of the Australian government drew little notice when it was announced in November after months of quiet negotiations and a grueling election.
At the time, Donald Trump’s unexpected presidential victory overshadowed news of the deal — and then-Secretary of State John Kerry simply said the United States had “agreed to consider referrals” from the United Nations’ refugee agency, UNHCR.
But as part of the unusual arrangement, the United States said it would accept the roughly 1,250 refugees Australia has been holding in offshore detention centers on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island and the impoverished island nation of Nauru.
President Trump was ticked off when he learned about it.
The deal sprung to the fore late Wednesday when details of his contentious phone conversation with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull emerged.
Bill Frelick, director of Human Rights Watch’s refugee program, said the agreement was a “one-off humanitarian gesture” meant to help an ally that has serious issues with asylum-seekers.
“My preference would have been that Australia do the right thing and take these people,” he said.
Many of the refugees hail from Iraq and Iran, two of the countries on Trump’s travel-ban list.
Two months before the deal was struck, Turnbull agreed at a summit in New York to accept Central American refugees who had escaped violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras and were being held in US-funded facilities in Costa Rica.
Many of the deal’s details still remain unclear — much to the chagrin of some members of Congress.
In December, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote a letter to former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson and Kerry, asking that they be briefed on “the circumstances surrounding the agreement.”
Only refugees who have undergone dergone a rigorous vetting process — including uding two interviews with US officials — would be allowed to enter the United States ates under the terms of the agreement, according ccording to Britain’s Guardian newspaper.er.
Australia has been sharply criticized riticized for its detention centers, which ich hu-human-rights groups have decriedied as being “prison-like.” Some refugees gees have been held in the centers for years as they wait to be resettled. ed.