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White House says Biden will reverse decision to keep Trump-era refugee cap after outcry

Refugee advocates protest former President Donald Trump’s hardline policies in front of the White House. (file photo)

The White House says President Joe Biden will reverse a decision to keep the Donald Trump administration’s historically-low ceiling for refugee admissions this year, following fierce backlash from Democratic lawmakers and refugee advocacy groups.

Biden earlier Friday moved to speed up refugee admissions but kept his predecessor’s cap of 15,000 refugees for this year, shelving a plan to raise it to 62,500.

The decision infuriated Congressional Democrats and refugee resettlement agencies, who had hoped the Democratic president would swiftly reverse the harsh refugee policies of Trump, a Republican.

As the outcry intensified, the White House issued a statement later in the day, saying Biden would set a “final, increased refugee cap” for the remainder of this fiscal year by May 15.

Press secretary Jen Psaki said the earlier announcement was made because the president “was urged to take immediate action to reverse the Trump policy that banned refugees from many key regions, to enable flights from those regions within days; today's order does that.”

Biden has been under pressure from Democratic lawmakers and refugee advocates to deliver on a campaign promise to raise the current cap to 125,000.

Julian Castro, a former secretary of Housing and Urban Development, called Biden’s move “a bad decision.” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Democrat of Washington, said it was “simply unacceptable and unconscionable” and Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar described it as “shameful.”

“We are reaching out to the White House to understand why this figure is a fraction of what the administration committed to in congressional consultations,” Krish O'Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, a resettlement agency, said after the initial announcement.

The International Rescue Committee refugee advocacy group called Biden's action “a disturbing and unjustified retreat.”

The White House denied accusations that Biden’s cautious approach was politically motivated and, in any way, connected to the chaos at the US-Mexico border — which last month saw the largest number of migrant encounters in at least 15 years.

Republicans have blamed Biden for the situation at the southern border, faulting his moves to reverse other Trump-era immigration policies.

An increasing number of families and unaccompanied minors from Central America, many seeking asylum in the US, have been among those detained at the border in recent months.

At the White House press briefing on Friday, Psaki attempted to deflect criticism away from President Biden for the delay in acting on the Trump-era refugee cap.

“It took us some time to see and evaluate how ineffective, or how trashed in some ways the refugee processing system had become, and so we had to rebuild some of those muscles and put it back in place,” she said.


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