Will Donald Trump follow through beginning on day 1?
Two days ago, I reportedon the total number of refugees being rushed in to the US right now presumably to beat an expected cut-off of resettlement from at least some countries (terror-producing) of the world after Donald Trump becomes President on January 20th.
And, although we reported new proposed sites have been placed on hold (see Bloomington, IN), there are still plenty of existing sites where refugees are being placed at the highest rate in recent memory.
Here is a map from Wrapsnet.orgshowing the numbers and placement of Syrians admitted to the US in the first ten weeks of this fiscal year (Oct. 1, 2016 to Dec. 10, 2016). 2,671 have been placed, and at this rate we would expect 13,889 by September 30th, 2017, if Donald Trump doesn’t do what he promised.
This map is for the first 10 weeks of FY17. Florida is 132 (couldn’t fit whole map in shot) and Alaska and Hawaii are zero.
Here are the top ten states so far in FY2017 receiving Syrians.
Data from Wrapsnetputs the percentage of Muslims at 98% and the vast majority of those are Sunnis (remember it is the UN choosing our refugees!).
Just a reminder, this is only data for resettled refugees and does not take in to account Syrians getting in to the US through other means.
“We in Bloomington and groups all throughout the United States are waiting for the new budget to come out. Like a lot of vulnerable populations, we will have to see how much funding will be allocated.”
(Refugee promoterDiane Legomsky)
This is the first in what I expect to be many reports from controversial potential refugee resettlement sites that the Obama State Department was attempting to get open quickly. Why? Because actions by Congress to limit funding in the appropriations process are causing the DOS and the ORR to start pulling in the reins on new sites. US STATE DEPT. NO-SHOW! More than 100 people came out to a refugee forum in Bloomington, Indiana in early November. Experts DON BARNETT and JIM SIMPSON debated one lonely pro-refugee immigration lawyer, when Barbara Day, representing the US State Department, was a no-show and purportedly discouraged refugee agencies in the state from participating as well. Photo and story from Bloomington, here: http://www.idsnews.com/article/2016/11/locals-discuss-concerns-for-refugee-families Elections have consequences and the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP)may be changed beginning January 21, 2017 (the day after inauguration day).
We expect the present political appointees, Anne Richard at the Dept. of State and Bob Carey at the Office of Refugee Resettlement (HHS) to be job hunting soon if they aren’t already. Indeed, they could go back (revolving door!) to the ‘non-profit’ resettlement contractor they both came from—the International Rescue Committee.
Showing once again the impact that federal funding (or the lack of it!) has on local resettlement offices, the announcement that the planned program is now on hold for Bloomington, IN was reported yesterday at the Herald Times (emphasis is mine):
The effort to resettle refugees in Bloomington has been put on hold as local and national aid organizations await details of the incoming presidential administration’s 2017 budget plans.
The announcement came Saturday from Bloomington Refugee Support Network chairwoman Diane Legomsky, who said while the organization is no longer expecting refugees to arrive this spring, she is confident this is just a delay of the inevitable.
“We in Bloomington and groups all throughout the United States are waiting for the new budget to come out. Like a lot of vulnerable populations, we will have to see how much funding will be allocated. However, this is not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when.’” Legomsky said. “We certainly anticipate that resettlement will be happening here; it just might be in late 2017 or in 2018.”
The State Department has been clear that it considers Bloomington an ideal resettlement city: In addition to being extremely welcoming, it is an exceptionally well-resourced city, able to resettle and give support to refugees in a very cost-effective way. Any budgeting decisions about resettlement are based on national, rather than state or local, considerations, Legomsky said.
[….]
Local efforts to welcome refugees to Bloomington have sparked opposition from the Grassroots Conservative political group, which has raised concerns at public forums about safety and potential cost to host communities.
Earlier this month, Congress passed a continuing spending resolution to fund the federal government through April 28, providing an opportunity for the new administration to put its imprint on the 2017 budget. [Will Trump severely restrict federal funding in the second half of FY2017?—ed]
President-elect Donald Trump was critical of the Syrian resettlement program, in particular, during his recent presidential campaign, and he called for suspension of immigration from areas of the world that have a history of exporting terrorism until “extreme vetting” measures could be put in place.
The law is very clear on this last point, the President of the United States can stop immigration from any region of the world he wishes. More here (but warning this requires a paid subscription).
One commenter said that local millionaire developers (who have empty apartments) will be disappointed! Remember refugee resettlement is big business! Federal dollars (your money) grease the skids.
Look for more from me going forward about the federal Budget and Appropriations process in the new year.
I mostly wanted to know what the numbers are looking like because I’m sure the Obama Administration is pouring them in as fast as they can before January 20th, the day Donald Trump moves in to the White House.
So checking Wrapsnet.org this morning, and to make it easy on myself (with the math) I checked the data from October 1, 2016 to December 10, 2016 (exactly ten weeks) and this is what I found. We admitted 21,117 refugees from all over the world in those ten weeks. That is a rate of approximately 2,112 per week so far this fiscal year*** which is way beyond anything we have seen in years. See the monthly rates for the last ten years here.
So here is a screenshot (sorry couldn’t get it all on the screen) of where the 21,117 have been placed in the last ten weeks:
Numbers include all nationalities for the first ten weeks of FY 2017. Florida is 599, Hawaii is 3 and Alaska is 22.
And here is the list of the top ten states so far:
Clearly the feds are not respecting the wishes of the Texas governor. By the way, “cases” involve family units and obviously “Inds” stands for individuals.
For all sorts of data and reports, visit two important categories here at RRW. Visit ‘Refugee statistics’and ‘Where to find information.’ Both are categories where I post information like this.
I’ll try to do one of these reports for some of the primary ethnic groups over the coming days.
***I always try to use fiscal year which runs, in this case, from October 1, 2016 to September 30, 2017, because the Refugee Admissions Program operates on a fiscal year basis. So, if you see numbers being reported elsewhere, take note of whether the reporter is using the fiscal year or calendar year.
When Donald Trump said the Ohio State Somali refugee jihadist should not have been here, he was right.
More information is coming out every day on who these people are and how they got in to the US.
From Leo Hohmann at World Net Daily:
Abdul Razak Ali Artan, the Ohio State student who attacked fellow students with his car and a butcher knife last month, was a known recruitment target of Islamic terrorists when Homeland Security officials allowed him into the country as a “refugee.”
See what former DHS officer, Philip Haney, says about the Somali ‘refugee’ family whose son went on Ohio State jihadi rampage.
The revelation came from a letter sent Wednesday by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Artan entered the U.S. as a refugee along with his mother and six of his siblings, leaving one sibling behind in Somalia.
Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is demanding more information on the screening process applied to Artan and his family.
While applying for entrance into the U.S. as a “refugee” from Somalia in 2013, Artan’s mother told immigration officials she feared persecution from al-Shabaab, an al-Qaida affiliated terrorist group, and believed Abdul and his siblings would be recruited into the organization if they remained in Somalia, the Daily Caller reported.
That knowledge should have led USCIS officials to “conduct additional questioning to better understand ties to a group that the United States designated as a foreign terrorist organization in 2008,” the letter said. But the additional questioning, which the committee describes as “common practice” in those situations, never happened.
Artan’s mother also told government screeners that her husband had been kidnapped by al-Shabab.
All of these facts should have been red flags, a former DHS screening officer told WND.
[….]
Phil Haney, a recently retired Homeland Security officer and co-author of the bombshell book “See Something Say Nothing,” said it’s not all that rare that a case with obvious red flags gets no response when passed up the line from the original interviewer at DHS.
Continue reading herebecause the meat of Hohmann’s report is his interview with author and former DHS officer Phil Haney who says concerns about certain refugee cases began to be ignored as soon as Obama took office.
I’m quoted in Hohmann’s piece too reiterating what I have recently said: The new AG Jeff Sessions should take this case apart from top to bottom to learn how the Somali pipeline to America operates.
Editor: Apologies for not posting all of the comments you sent yesterday, most didn’t appear until I got up this morning. What is up with wordpress?
I’ve been keeping an eye out for stories about how refugee resettlement contractors and the Obama agencies responsible for resettlement are reacting to the coming Trump Administration. They are no doubt fearful that Trump will act on his campaign promises—-some are more optimistic than others that it was all talk on the campaign trail. (For the record we expect Trump to stop the program (at a minimum) from terror producing regions*** of the world within days of his inauguration on January 20th. And, we expect all Obama political appointees responsible for the refugee program to be gone before that date!)
Here is news from VICE magazine(featuring Texas) about some of the reaction (emphasis is mine):
Resettlement agencies in Texas—and other states with governors who have fought to block refugees—are working harder than ever to soothe their clients in the wake of the election of Donald Trump, who pledged during his campaign to severely restrict refugees from settling in the US. Now, as resettlement agencies try to keep a calm face, they also brace for a possible halt on the country’s refugee program, which advocates warn could cause a humanitarian disaster.
Kekic points out that as legal immigrants refugees are free to move anywhere they wish in America. For more on Kekic, see what I said about him last month: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/11/12/poughkeepsie-church-world-service-official-spins-about-refugee-islamic-terrorists/
The president-elect has kept quiet about his resettlement plans since his election, and his press office did not return requests for comment. But during his campaign, Trump vowed to suspend the acceptance of all Syrians and to stop sending refugees to any community that opposed them. [More on this below—ed]
“A Trump administration will not admit any refugees without the support of the local community where they are being placed,” Trump said just three days before the election in a Minnesota campaign speech. He added that the state had “suffered enough” since Somali refugees began arriving. Later, after a Somali refugee attacked students at Ohio State, Trump tweeted that the 18-year-old “should not have been in our country.”
If a Trump administration does decide to block refugee resettlement in certain communities, the move would be unprecedented. Currently, the Office of Refugee Resettlement places refugees throughout the country with the help of national NGOs under the federal refugee resettlement program. States cannot turn away refugees, even if their communities don’t want them.
[….]
Abbott’s withdrawal, largely seen as a political move, can’t actually prevent new refugees from coming to Texas. But some warn that the Trump administration could cut services and funds, effectively gutting these programs. [This is the key in my opinion because the resettlement contractors have almost no private resources—ed]
“If the services we provide now were to stop, it would be a humanitarian disaster,” Rippenkroeger told me. “There would be people homeless, without medical coverage and food. It would be a very direct human catastrophe so we can’t afford for the program not to be fully functional.”
Look at this! This program costs the federal taxpayer $100 million alone just for Texas for one year!
Texas is slated to receive about $100 million in federal funds for refugee resettlement in 2017…
[….]
“There’s no amount of fundraising we could do to replace federal support.” [That is right because people give their private charitable gifts to efforts they approve of!—ed]
Then this is something I expected was going on big time and not just in Texas—emptying the coffers at ORR before January 20th (not necessarily for refugees but to keep the contractor offices open).
Amid the uncertainty, Rippenkroeger said the Office of Refugee Resettlement was working with a “nose to the grindstone approach” in setting up a system to distribute federal funds through the Texas NGOs.
[….]
Refugee advocates in other parts of the country where anti-refugee sentiment is common displayed similar reserve when I asked them about Trump’s resettlement plans. Cole Varga, executive director of Exodus Refugee Immigration Inc.—the organization that sued Mike Pence, the governor of Indiana and vice president-elect, for trying to block Syrian refugees from the state—told me he was hopeful.
“Currently, we have not received any word from our national partners or the State Department on how the incoming Trump administration will run the federal government’s refugee resettlement program,” Varga told me in an email, declining to comment on the lawsuit.
Do not get excited by Trump’s statement about not sending refugees to communities that don’t want them. This is not realistic and a long-time Church World Service head honcho gives us one reason why:
Even if Trump allows certain communities to pull out of resettlement, he can’t stop refugees from moving states after arriving in the US—which means the most significant difference may be the money states receive, noted Erol Kekic, executive director of the national resettlement agency Church World Service.
“Immigration is a federal matter, and if the nation continues to admit refugees, they’re free to go wherever they want the moment they arrive,” Kekic told me.“They may not receive services, but they’re free to move—so even if Governor Abbott says he wants none in Texas, how will he know a refugee won’t move to Texas?”
Continue reading here.
The RAP is built on a house of cards primarily based on federal funding per head of refugee admitted to the US. The ultimate answer is to stop the program (stop the numbers coming in and the funding for it!) altogether until the Refugee Act of 1980 can be reformed or trashed entirely.
I have to laugh when Kekic (above) says that “immigration is a federal matter,” but I would bet a buck he is all for those sanctuary cities thumbing their noses at the incoming Trump team saying they (the city) will decide whether to enforce federal immigration law or not.
***On terror producing regions of the world. I am talking specifically about Syrians, Somalis, Burmese Rohingya Muslims, Afghans, and most Iraqis wherever in the world we are picking them up. For example, Trump’s people can’t say “we won’t take any refugees from Somalia.” Most Somalis are not in Somalia any longer, but scattered around the world (some in very safe countries) and we are taking them to America anyway! Again, at this point in time, Donald Trump as President must stop or slow the flow across the board and not get into the weeds on the issue of whether a community wants refugees or not!
