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The Trump administration has directed immigration officers to overview the circumstances of refugees admitted beneath former President Joe Biden, as a part of an unprecedented effort to establish potential causes that might disqualify them from with the ability to keep within the U.S., an inside federal authorities memo obtained by CBS Information reveals.
The memo, dated Nov. 21 and signed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Providers Director Joseph Edlow, instructs company officers to analyze the circumstances of refugees who entered the U.S. over a four-year interval, between Jan. 20, 2021, and Feb. 20, 2025.
Edlow directed USCIS officers to overview the circumstances of all refugees admitted throughout this time interval, and to doubtlessly reinterview them. These investigations and reinterviews, Edlow wrote, would give attention to figuring out whether or not these people met the definition of a refugee once they entered the U.S. and whether or not there are any authorized boundaries that might make them ineligible to turn out to be everlasting residents of the U.S.
The memo additionally positioned an indefinite maintain on all pending functions for inexperienced playing cards (or everlasting residency) filed by refugees allowed into the nation through the timeframe outlined within the memo. Underneath U.S. regulation, refugees are eligible for everlasting residency one yr after being admitted.
Edlow famous that candidates can’t attraction any denials of their inexperienced card circumstances. If the circumstances of “principal” refugees — or the primary applicant in the event that they arrived with their relations — are rejected, their kin’ circumstances would even be denied, and they might be stripped of their refugee standing, in accordance with the memo. These whose functions are denied will be positioned in deportation proceedings.
Refugees should show they suffered or fled persecution overseas primarily based on considered one of 5 components: their race, nationality, faith, political opinion or membership in a social group.
Some 233,000 refugees entered the U.S. between February 2021 and January 2025, a interval that largely traces up with the Biden administration, in accordance with federal statistics.
The federal authorities paused the refugee program shortly after President Trump retook workplace. Officers have made restricted exceptions, largely for Afrikaners, or folks in South Africa who’re the descendants of European settlers.
Final month, the Trump administration capped refugee admissions for this fiscal yr at 7,500, the bottom degree in historical past. These slots will “primarily be allotted amongst Afrikaners,” who the Trump administration alleges have confronted discrimination in South Africa for being White, and “different victims of unlawful or unjust discrimination of their respective homelands.” The South African authorities has denied that Afrikaners are being persecuted.
Earlier than the pause, refugees usually spent years in third international locations present process medical checks, safety screenings and interviews previous to being admitted into the U.S.
However in his memo, Edlow mentioned the Trump administration believes the Biden administration “prioritized expediency, amount, and admissions over high quality interviews and detailed screening and vetting.”
The memo was first reported by CNN.
CBS Information has reached out to DHS for remark.
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