Title: Trump’s New Ban Leaves Few Spots for Refugees, Even the Hunted - The New York Times
Headings: Trump’s New Ban Leaves Few Spots for Refugees, Even the Hunted
Trump’s New Ban Leaves Few Spots for Refugees, Even the Hunted
Content: We got a call last weekend telling us that they’d find us under whatever rock we were hiding.” When President Trump first tried to freeze the nation’s refugee program in January, the courts jumped in and thwarted his executive order. But one vital limit that the courts did allow — and which Mr. Trump’s new order continues — is a drastic reduction in the number of refugees admitted to the United States this fiscal year, from 110,000 under President Barack Obama to Mr. Trump’s revised cap: 50,000. And those seats are mostly taken already. More than 37,000 refugees from around the world have been admitted to the United States since the fiscal year began in October. By Monday morning, with seven months to go in the fiscal year, fewer than 12,700 slots remained under Mr. Trump’s limit. In a statement on Monday, John F. Kelly, the homeland security secretary, said the new executive order would “make America safer, and address long-overdue concerns about the security of our immigration system.” “We must undertake a rigorous review of our visa and refugee vetting programs to increase our confidence in the entry decisions we make for visitors and immigrants to the United States,” he said. “ We cannot risk the prospect of malevolent actors using our immigration system to take American lives.”