US: Refugee admissions could take months to resume, says Trump administration
The Trump administration on Tuesday said that it could take months to fully comply with a court order to resume admitting refugees to the United States, according to a status report it filed.
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) said the delays will result from the need for the federal government’s nonprofit partners - International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and Church World Service (CWS) - to rehire furloughed staff and implement new vetting procedures to screen refugees after it suspended refugee resettlement seven weeks ago.
DOJ lawyers said the administration is looking to hire a new resettlement agency to provide resettlement services after the administration terminated the contracts of 10 longtime partners last week - a process expected to take at least three months, according to the court filing.
"The Department of State is working to ascertain how long it will take to restore the USRAP [US Refugee Admissions Program] to operational status. As USRAP functions restart, additional areas that require remediation will likely be identified,” the filing reads.
The status report was filed with US District Judge Jamal N Whitehead, who issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from proceeding with efforts to suspend the refugee resettlement programme for at least three months, saying the executive order represented a violation of congressional authority.
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The International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), a legal aid and advocacy organisation, has sued the administration on behalf of refugee resettlement partners - CWS, HIAS, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services and nine refugees whose cases were affected by the ban.
All of these resettlement partners have lost federal funding after Trump’s order. The Trump administration appealed the injunction.
Rick Santos, president and CEO of CWS, said in a press release: “This proposal would punish those who have long supported refugee families and abandon decades of expertise and infrastructure that make this program successful. Doing so is harmful, unnecessary and acts to strip newly arriving refugee families from accessing a robust support network to rebuild their lives.”
Wreaking 'havoc'
Resettlement groups filed an amended complaint last week alleging that the State Department sent notices terminating their federal contracts in violation of the court’s injunction.
Whitehead scheduled another hearing on the amended complaint and ordered the Trump administration to file a status report detailing its efforts to comply with the injunction and restart the refugee programme.
“This report raises more questions than it answers,” Melissa Keaney, an attorney for one of the plaintiffs, IRAP, said in a written statement referring to the government's report.
“By the government’s own admission, their suspension of refugee processing and funding has wreaked havoc on the refugee admissions program, leaving the government unable to even estimate for the Court when the program will again be fully operational.”
She added that the administration had a “flagrant intent to undermine and circumvent the judiciary and Congress”.
Resettlement groups said that none of the refugees named in the lawsuit had received communication from the federal government about rebooking travel arrangements or other steps to move forward on their resettlement cases.
In its court filing, the DOJ said federal officials contacted the plaintiffs’ attorneys last week to get more information about the individual cases, and the government is reviewing the material to determine how to move forward.
The administration had a 'flagrant intent to undermine and circumvent the judiciary and Congress'
- Melissa Keaney, attorney
According to the court filing, the State Department has notified the IOM and CWS that operations using their services would resume once they are found to be in compliance with other executive orders from Trump that prohibit federal contractors from pursuing diversity initiatives.
Those two organisations, the DOJ said, put workers on furlough after Trump issued his refugee ban in January, and it remains unclear how long it will take for the staff to be reinstated.
The US Refugee Admissions Program was created in 1980 by the Refugee Act of 1980 to provide a safe and legal pathway for people fleeing persecution, war or conflict to come to the United States to either join with family or to meet foreign and humanitarian policy priorities of the US government.
Despite political rhetoric that often scapegoats refugees as a burden, refugees are a fiscal success for the United States. Based on a study commissioned by the Trump administration during his first term, refugees were shown to contribute $63bn more in federal, state and local taxes than they took in services and assistance between the 2005-2014 period examined.
The study was rejected by the Trump administration.
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