A report published by Politico last month suggests that the Trump administration would like to reduce the number of refugee admissions to zero
Members of various government agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the Department of Defence, and the National Security Council meet annually to settle a cap for refugees admissions and at this year’s meeting, a citizenship and immigration services representative aligned with the White House suggested that the cap be set at zero.
This proposal was dismissed by Department of Homeland Security officials as unworkable, and instead it was proposed that a number somewhere between 3000 to 10,000 persons might be a more workable figure.
Refugee admissions usually take several years to complete and in the past officials have developed strategies to take this timeframe into account. These strategies would be disrupted by a complete ban on admissions in the manner proposed by the White House. Further, an official policy to dramatically reduce the number of refugee admissions could have widespread negative implications for certain government departments, for example, officials in the Department of Defence rely on the refugee admission policy to enable the admission into the US of a Iraqi citizens who risk their lives assisting US forces in that country.
