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: For more than a year, Veronica and her sister have been in hiding here in El Salvador, hoping to receive refugee status in the United States. The two girls were doing homework at their dining room table when masked men burst in and gunned down their grandparents — the community’s only two health workers — on rumors that the couple had been tipping off the police about gangs in the neighborhood. Like many thousands of others, Veronica and her sister applied for sanctuary in the United States under a special Obama administration effort to grapple with the violence that has gutted Central America and sent waves of its people on a desperate march toward the American border. But on Monday, the Trump administration announced a four-month suspension on all refugee admissions to the United States so security procedures can be improved and, perhaps most significantly, cut the number of total refugees allowed into the country by more than half. “We can’t remain in the same place,” said the girls’ aunt, Reina, who is seeking refugee status for her nieces, witnesses to the double homicide. “ 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.