- Trump administration targets refugees admitted under Biden.
- Plans to re-interview hundreds of thousands.
- Potential revocation of refugee status announced.
The director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Joseph Edlow, signed the November memo, which instructs the agency to examine and re-interview all of the approximately 233,000 refugees who were admitted to the nation between January 20, 2021, and February 20, 2025. It also prohibits the processing of green card applications from refugees admitted during that time.
It denounces the previous administration for supposedly having "prioritized expediency and quantity" and describes the historic decision to reassess each refugee admission made while former President Joe Biden was in office as an essential step in evaluating national security threats.
“Just the threat of this is unspeakably cruel. … To threaten refugees with taking away their status would be re-traumatizing and a vicious misuse of taxpayer money,”
Mark Hetfield, the president of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), told CNN.
Additionally, spouses, children, and other family members of refugees who may have joined them while arriving in the US will be re-interviewed by USCIS.
The interviews are intended to ascertain whether individuals who were awarded refugee status truly fit the legal definition of a refugee at the time and to find out if waivers were wrongfully issued by the Biden administration.
Without providing any proof, Trump administration officials and anti-immigration activists have claimed that the Biden administration improperly emphasized processing refugee applications quickly.
Refugee activists denounced the proposed action, claiming that these individuals are among the most vulnerable to have sought refuge in the United States and have already successfully completed a demanding, usually multi-year process to confirm they have legitimate fears of persecution.
AfghanEvac president Shawn VanDiver said in a statement that the administration's "unprecedented and cruel" action puts people who have
"already passed the most exhaustive vetting processes in the world multiple agencies, biometric checks, layered security reviews"
after escaping persecution "back into instability" at the hands of the US government.
The Biden administration "accelerated refugee admissions from terror and gang-prone countries, prioritizing sheer numbers over rigorous vetting and strict adherence to legal requirements," according to a statement from DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, who described the unprecedented decision to review hundreds of thousands of refugee admissions retroactively as a necessary corrective.
“This reckless approach undermined the integrity of our immigration system and jeopardized the safety and security of the American people. Corrective action is now being taken to ensure those who are present in the United States deserve to be here,”
she said.
With the exception of a few groups from majority-white nations, Trump's government has essentially closed the refugee admissions process since he took office again in January.
Under Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the State Department has also indicated that it intends to prioritize the resettlement of far-right and white nationalist activists from European countries like Germany, where laws intended to prevent a resurgence of the fascist movement that led the country to start the Second World War and commit a genocide that wiped out six million Jews from Europe's population restrict or outright prohibit extremist and ultranationalist parties.
The White House has taken actions to lessen immigration safeguards for the most vulnerable outside of the refugee program, including revoking Temporary Protected Status for immigrants from a number of unstable and war-torn countries, most recently this week for those from Myanmar.
Given the Trump administration's extraordinary efforts to abolish birthright citizenship, naturalized Americans also worry that their status may be in jeopardy.
The actions come after comparable limitations during Trump's first term, when admissions of refugees fell to an all-time low.
How will reinterviews affect refugees with pending green card applications?
The reinterviews will beget all pending green card operations from deportees admitted between January 20, 2021, and February 20, 2025, to be firmed until the review is completed and further opinions are made by USCIS leadership.
Still, their exile status may be abandoned, and their green card operation denied, If during reinterviews a exile is set up not to meet the criteria. This could also affect secondary deportees( consorts, children, follow- to- join aspirants). The memo subconvenes USCIS broad discretion to terminate exile status with little or no appeal options.
This freeze is anticipated to beget detainments in status adaptations and query for thousands of deportees, with implicit pitfalls of expatriation if they lose exile status. The process marks a significant dislocation in the exile resettlement and adaptation system in the U.S.