Under Trump, Iraqis who helped U.S. in war have stalled in refugee system
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is refusing to take in thousands of Iraqis who risked their lives helping U.S. forces during the Iraq War, cutting the number of highpriority refugees allowed into the United States this year and drastically slowing background checks they must undergo.
Only 153 Iraqi refugees whose applications were given high priority were admitted in the fiscal year that ended in September — down from a high of 9,829 in the 2014 fiscal year, according to government data obtained by the New York Times.
An estimated 110,000 Iraqis are waiting to be approved as refugees based on their wartime assistance. But Friday, the Trump administration capped the number eligible this year at 4,000.
After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 that forced Saddam Hussein from power, thousands of Iraqis worked with U.S. troops, diplomats and contractors, serving as translators and cultural advisers. Those Iraqis and their families were threatened, and in many cases attacked, by Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias who accused them of siding with Americans during the eight-year war.
Suhad Munshid left Iraq and resettled in Missoula, Mont., in April — nearly seven years after she applied for a priority refugee visa. The “semi-impossible” application process will probably keep her sister in Iraq from receiving priority status, she said in an interview Friday.
“I have my only sister living in Baghdad,” she said. “It’s really concerning with what is going on, and I have to call her every day to make sure she is OK.”
Munshid’s brother-in-law worked as a cook for U.S. troops in Iraq in 2006, and her family’s home was used as a safe house for soldiers who needed to rest during patrols in Sadr City, a poor neighborhood in Baghdad. But only after the United States declared in 2011 that the war was over and withdrew most of its troops did Munshid come to believe she and her family needed to move to the U.S. to escape rampant bombings and increasing instability.
“Every time that I went out, I was not certain that I would make it back home,” said Munshid, 36, speaking through an interpreter. She now works at a T.J. Maxx in Missoula, stocking shelves; her husband is a chef at a local Indian restaurant.
In an official notice issued late Friday, President Donald Trump capped the number of worldwide refugees the United States will admit in the 2020 fiscal year at 18,000, a record low. The move, which had been expected for weeks, was meant to protect what Trump described as refugees of “special humanitarian concern.”
Last year, 30,000 refugees were allowed into the United States. During President Barack Obama’s last year in office, 110,000 were admitted.
Overall, about 300,000 people worldwide are actively seeking refugee status to enter the United States. The new cap means that 6 percent of them have a chance of being admitted over the next year amid what the United Nations has declared a worldwide crisis involving nearly 26 million refugees, half of whom are children.
It is also the first year that the United States has set limits for groups of refugees based on the threats they face at home, as opposed to what part of the world they are from.
Of the 18,000 refugees who will be admitted this year, 5,000 slots are reserved for people persecuted for their religion, 4,000 for high-priority Iraqis and 1,500 for Central Americans. The remaining 7,500 slots will be open to those applying from elsewhere in the world.
But two government officials said far fewer high-priority Iraqi refugees were expected to be admitted in 2020. Interviews for applicants — a necessary step in the refugee process — have been slowed and significantly limited since the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and Consulate in Irbil, Iraq, ordered all nonessential employees out of Iraq for security reasons in May, officials said.