Trump slashes refugee resettlement to record low, leaves some Columbus families torn apart

The odds of Semere Tekle Tesfatsion's family getting to join him in the United States just got slimmer.

The 36-year-old Eritrean refugee has been waiting for his wife and two young daughters to join him for four years. He applied just before President Donald Trump took office and dramatically reduced the number of refugees who can be resettled in the United States. 

Late Wednesday night, the Trump administration lowered the number even further, just 34 minutes before a statutory deadline to do so. Now, a maximum of 15,000 refugees will be allowed to enter the U.S. in fiscal year 2021 — 3,000 fewer than the ceiling set by the administration for fiscal year 2020, which expired at midnight Wednesday.

The 15,000 figure is the lowest refugee cap announced since President Ronald Reagan signed the Refugee Act in 1980. Until the Trump administration, and throughout most of the 40-year history of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, annual targets for admission have averaged 95,000 refugees, with annual admissions averaging 80,000. During his time in office, Trump has cut the number of refugees admitted by 80%.

"The program is virtually at a standstill," said Sunil Varghese, policy director at the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP).

As of Sept. 25, some 10,892 refugee had been resettled, well below the 18,000 ceiling, according to the U.S. State Department.

Refugee resettlement was halted for a few months in the spring due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but restarted in July. 

The latest reduction falls in line with all kinds of restrictions that the administration has placed on both legal and illegal immigration since Trump took office.

In its statement late Wednesday, the State Department combined the new refugee ceiling with a projection of more than 290,000 new claims for asylum this year.

However, asylum seekers and refugees are two different groups. Asylees seek legal status while already living in the United State, while refugees are handpicked by the government after they have been vetted while they are still abroad. Refugees often live in camps in other countries or on their own in tumultuous, often dangerous circumstances, waiting for years to be resettled.

"The United States is committed to achieving the best humanitarian outcomes while advancing our foreign policy interests," says a White House release. "Given the dire situation of nearly 80 million displaced people around the world, the mission of American diplomacy is more important than ever."

The administration also said it is focused on ending conflicts that cause people to be displaced.

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Angie Plummer, executive director of one of two Columbus refugee resettlement agencies, called the low refugee ceiling a political tactic.

"I think that's meant to keep at bay the complete ire of shutting down the program," said Plummer, with Community Refugee and Immigration Services. "I don't think there's a genuine interest of this administration in refugees or trying to resettle them."

The upcoming election will likely set the tone for the program's future, Varghese said. After taking office in January 2017, Trump immediately cut the amount of refugees allowed to be resettled from former President Barack Obama's 110,000 to 50,000. 

"Under Donald Trump I think we would expect a continuing decrease and then an eventual zeroing out of the program," Varghese said.

On his campaign website, presidential candidate Joe Biden states that he would set the refugee ceiling at 125,000 with plans to raise it over time. 

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"Biden is more embracing the notion of America as a place that provides protection to people fleeing persecution and from the Trump campaign we're generally seeing the opposite," Varghese said. "Historically the United States has been a global leader in refugee protection and what we've seen in the past four years is now we've ceded that goal."

Refugee resettlement used to be bipartisan and non-political, said some advocates, but Trump has turned it into a political issue. Trump claimed during a recent campaign rally in Minnesota that Biden would propose a "700% increase in refugees coming from the most dangerous places in the world, including Yemen, Syria, and your favorite country, Somalia."

Former refugee Nadia Kasvin, director and co-founder of US Together, the other resettlement agency in Columbus, said refugees don't drain resources but help provide them. 

"Refugees have historically contributed to the communities we're coming to in many, many different ways and now it's been so well demonstrated during the COVID crisis when refugees continue to work on the front lines," Kasvin said.

In the announcement, the administration said the proposal shows Trump's commitment to prioritizing the safety and well-being of Americans.

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But advocates say refugees aren't dangerous and that America has a responsibility to help vulnerable people.

“We’re talking about tens of millions of desperate families with no place to go and having no hope for protection in the near term,” said Krish Vignarajah, president of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, a national, federally funded resettlement agency.

Tesfatsion, of Whitehall, said he wanted to come to the United States because Malta, where he was living after fleeing Eritrea in 2011, wouldn't allow his family to join him. He said he was told when he left Malta for Boston in 2016 that they would be with him inside a year. His wife, Helen Mogos Mengistab, lives in Sudan with their 12-year-old daughter Yosan Semere Tekle and 4-year-old daughter Sara Semere Tekl.

"We still hope they are coming but we don't know when," he said.

Tesfatsion said he talks with his family every day but is lonely and misses them terribly.

"We do everything they ask us for," he said of the numerous interviews his family has  done as part of the resettlement process that was started in 2016. "There are no answers."

The Associated Press contributed to this story. 

dking@dispatch.com

@DanaeKing