
We were shocked to learn here that, although Donald Trump said he wanted a 120-day moratorium on refugee resettlement so as to evaluate whether we are doing “extreme vetting,” the US State Department would be admitting 900 refugees a week.
I just checked the numbers at Wrapsnet and from last Friday (4/14) to yesterday, we admitted 882. So, they are sticking with that goal which we believe will put them on target for an average number of refugees for the fiscal year—somewhere just over 60,000.
Trump also had said he was lowering the ceiling for FY17 to 50,000.
Yesterday it was at 41,553.
We will be watching to see if he continues to bring them in when that number is reached, at this rate, in about 10 weeks. (The fiscal year ends on September 30th.)
The big winners this past week were refugees from the DR Congo (206), Iraq (149) and Burma (114). Syrians were way down at 27 and 66 Somalis came in over those seven days.
Tag: Donald Trump
Fishy, fishy, fishy! PBS relates tall tales from US to Canada border-crossers!
You’ve heard the news, we’ve reported it for months, that fearing the Trumpster, migrants are flooding to the Canadian border into Prime Minister Trudeau’s waiting and welcoming arms.
Here we have PBS interviewing a couple of Africans who feared if they stayed in the US, Trump would be rounding them up to return them to Africa. Their tales of woe are transparently and obviously fishy!
The Somali woman, we are first introduced to, risked a winter trek across the US/Canada border with a small child even though we are told she was in the US LEGALLY. There are only a few possibilities: She was NOT in the US legally; she is shopping for a better welfare deal in Canada; or she is a nut. In any case, Canada can have her!

PBS:
LISA DESAI: Much of the four thousand mile American border with Canada is wide open and unsecured. In the first three months of this year, a steady stream of immigrants from all over the world braved the bitter cold to reach a country where they believe there’s less risk of detention and deportation. [Lisa doesn’t report that the upward trend of border crossers began while Obama was still President and the expectation was that Hillary would be the next one, so this isn’t a new phenomenon—ed]
Just north of Minnesota and North Dakota lies the Canadian province of Manitoba. The town of Emerson is a main entry point. An hour’s drive north is the provincial capital, Winnipeg, a city of 700-thousand. That’s where I met this woman from Somalia.
For her safety, we agreed to shield her face and call her “Nasra.” She settled in Minneapolis on a U.S. medical visa to get treatment for her six-year-old autistic son. Her family is part of a minority clan persecuted in Somalia’s civil war. [So, if she would be persecuted, why didn’t Nasra apply for asylum in US?—ed]

NASRA: I faced a lot of problems in Somalia. During the war, my father and my brother were attacked, and my mother and I endured so much pain — we left and never went back.
LISA DESAI: After President Trump listed Somalia as one of the countries whose citizens would be blocked from entering the U.S. Nasra decided that although she was legal, it wasn’t safe to stay.
NASRA: I heard that they were going to arrest people and take them back to Somalia and that they were going into people’s homes and they were going to separate families, mothers from children.
LISA DESAI: What would happen if you were deported back to Somalia?
NASRA: If I go back to Somalia I won’t stand a chance there, I would be killed.
LISA DESAI: In February, she left Minneapolis and became one of nearly 1,000 migrants, according to the Canadian Government, to cross from the U.S. into Canada this year. She paid a driver to take her and her son most of the way.
NASRA: We walked for hours, the snow was falling, we couldn’t see. It was cold, it was dark and if it wasn’t for God we would have died.
LISA DESAI: Under Canadian law, people like Nasra, who cross the border illegally, are arrested and taken in for a background check. If they don’t have a criminal record, they are often released within 24 hours. They’re appointed a government lawyer to represent them in their asylum hearing which usually takes place in two months. They are also connected with nonprofits that provide food and housing.
Go to the report, here, and don’t miss the story of the FAILED asylum seeker from Ghana. He failed to be granted asylum in Ecuador and in the US, so he took a trip to Canada to shop for a better deal. How convenient that PBS can blame Trump for scaring him to Canada?
Then it appears that the ‘welcoming’ Canadians are getting sick of it!
LISA DESAI: A poll last month found Canadian support for welcoming refugees is slipping. 48 percent said Canada should send these migrants back to the U.S. 36 percent said Canada should accept them.
See our previous posts on Trump and the Canada border by clicking here.
Somalis arrested in Clarkston, Georgia a long-time haven for refugee diversity
President Trump may be admitting new Somalis to the US every day, but at least the Administration is arresting those here illegally.
No time to say much about it, but want readers to see this story from Georgia (hat tip: Joanne):
Federal immigration authorities have started arresting Somali nationals in parts of DeKalb and Gwinnett counties that have long been havens for newcomers, including in Clarkston, according to African advocacy groups.

The arrests came after Somalia’s U.S. ambassador recently told Voice of America his embassy has learned that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is planning to deport about 4,000 of his countrymen. ICE confirmed that, as of last week, there were 4,801 Somalis in the U.S. who have been ordered removed. The vast majority of them are not being detained.
Until about a year ago, according to ICE, U.S. authorities could not get travel documents to deport people to Somalia, which has endured persistent deprivation and violence. Since Oct. 1, ICE has deported 237 Somalis, according to federal figures through April 1.
[….]
Omar Shekhey, the executive director for the Somali American Community Center in Clarkston, said as many as 10 Somalis have been arrested in Clarkston, Stone Mountain and in Gwinnett this week alone. He worries they could be deported to Somalia, which is now in the grips of a deadly drought. Those who have been arrested have been in the U.S. for many years, Shekhey said.
[….]
Clarkston Mayor Ted Terry said he is looking into ICE’s activities in his city, adding he is worried how the arrests could impact the relationships between immigrants and refugees and local police.
See my previous post on Somali deportations, here.
Reader: Why isn't Trump sending them all to Hawaii?
That made me laugh and I said I would have a look at the numbers!
If you are new to the issue, the joke is that when Hawaiian judge, and Obama pal, Derrick Watson put a halt to Trump’s last Executive Order one month ago, we pointed out rightly that Hawaii has only taken a handful of refugees for decades, see here and here.

I checked Wrapsnet just now. As of today Trump is at 40,671 refugees for this fiscal year which is way ahead of either George W. Bush or Barack Obama for this point in the fiscal year (see chart below).
2,565 refugees have been admitted to the US in the past 4 weeks when there was supposed to be a ‘moratorium’ on resettlement.
Hawaii? (Drum roll!)
Hawaii has taken ZERO refugees in those 4 weeks and only 3 Burmese in the whole of this fiscal year (out of the 40,671).
We should launch a campaign and call it ‘Send them all to Hawaii!’
Trump presiding over largest number of refugees admitted by mid-April in last ten years!

Endnote: Remember it is Hawaii that was sending its homeless people to the mainland! So much for loving diversity!
Trump crosses 40,000 refugees mark! Over 900 in past week! Syrians lead the pack in last 4 weeks
It has been 4 weeks since President Trump announced his 120-day “moratorium” on refugee resettlement as part of the court-halted Executive Order. And, for the umpteenth time, I repeat that the President did not have to even announce any “moratorium” or put it in an Executive Order! He has the power to simply stop the processing!

Then on March 30th we were stunned to learn that they were aiming to bring in 900 refugees a week through the remainder of the fiscal year that ends on September 30th.
If he and Tillerson keep that pace they will admit around 60,000 this year which is near the average number we have admitted since 9/11.
Do they think we are not watching?
George Bush loved refugees and he averaged under 60,000!
Sure enough, according to Wrapsnet in the last week, from April 6th to today (April 13th) they have admitted 977 refugees in ONE WEEK!
It was yesterday that I noticed Trump had passed the 40,000 mark (it was 40,180 this time yesterday morning). Today it is 40,602 (you might get slightly different numbers depending on the time of day you check the data, I try to check around the same time every day.)
That is an increase just since this time yesterday of 402! (See my right hand sidebar where I am tracking the numbers every few days).
Going back to the date that the “moratorium” was supposed to begin on March 16th the Trump State Department has admitted 2,496 refugees.

Of the 2,496, topping the list are 335 Syrians! 327 of those are Muslims. Other countries, where Trump’s campaign promise of “extreme vetting” was supposed to be put in place (Somalia and Iraq), come in at 283 each, and we admitted 116 Iranians in the last 4 weeks.
Most interesting to me is that we admitted 333 Burmese (that part is no a surprise because we have been admitting Burmese minorities for years and years).
The big surprise is that in just the last 4 weeks we admitted 100 Burmese Rohingya Muslims. When I first started writing RRW in 2007, we were steering clear of bringing the devout Rohingya to America.
VOLAGs not making so much noise now!
Have you noticed that there are fewer news stories about the Refugee contractors*** screaming bloody murder about Trump (and their loss of federal bucks) in the last week or so? I have. Has the word gone out to shut up for awhile?
The ultimate test for me will come in September when the Trump Department of State will send its “determination” to the Hill with the proposed numbers for FY2018. Will Trump simply cave and continue the trend he has begun to bring in the average number of refugees that we have seen in the last 15 years?
Endnote:
We will also be watching to see if the Tillerson Dept. of State will go back to holding public hearings on the size and scope of the US Refugee Admissions Program. The Obama DOS abandoned the public hearing format in 2015 after several years of hearings that had gotten contentious. See my comments last year here.
The ‘hearing’ is usually in May or possibly early June. We will be watching!
If the Trump team were smart they would hold some field hearings so that citizens impacted by the program could voice their concerns to the Administration—but, don’t hold your breath!
*** For new readers, these are the nine major contractors (VOLAGs), paid by you, to resettle refugees in your towns and cities:
- Church World Service (CWS)
- Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC) (secular)
- Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM)
- Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS)
- International Rescue Committee (IRC) (secular)
- US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) (secular)
- Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS)
- United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)
- World Relief Corporation (WR)