Trump’s New Ban Leaves Few Spots for Refugees, Even the Hunted
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.
Even before Mr. Trump’s executive order on Monday, officials at the Department of Homeland Security said they had not been taking on any new
cases since the president first sought to suspend refugee admissions in late January, effectively freezing new applications to the program.
In a statement on Monday, John F. Kelly, the homeland security secretary, said the new executive order would "make America safer,
and address long-overdue concerns about the security of our immigration system." "We must undertake a rigorous review of our visa and refugee vetting programs to increase our confidence in the entry decisions we make for visitors and immigrants to the United States," he said.
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.
Officials and immigrant advocates in Central America fear
that as the Trump administration cites the danger of admitting potential terrorists cloaked as refugees from nations like Syria, it is disregarding the tens of thousands of people here who are being terrorized by street gangs that actually originated in the United States.
In 2014, the Obama administration began setting up a program to offer refugee status or special entry for some Central American
children, hoping to stanch the tide of minors making the dangerous journey to the United States on their own.
"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.
