The Trump administration is ordering immigration officers to review all refugees admitted into the country under the Biden administration, threatening to revoke protections for those who have fled danger and persecution.
An internal memo reviewed by The Hill directs officers at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to “re-interview” some 200,000 refugees that entered the country over the four years former President Biden was in office.
Refugees are among the most thoroughly vetted immigrants to come to the U.S., undergoing multiple rounds of screening that can take years.
However, the memo suggests that the volume of refugees admitted by the Biden administration could create “vulnerabilities.”
“All principal refugees admitted during this period are to undergo a comprehensive review and a re-interview to verify that, at the time of their admission, they met the statutory definition of a refugee under the Immigration and Nationality Act. Officers must also reassess any inadmissibility issues that existed at the time of admission,” the memo states.
Should an officer choose to revoke a refugee’s status, it would also unwind that of any children. The move places a freeze on pending applications for green cards, leaving families in limbo amid the review.
The review comes as President Trump has set the refugee cap to its lowest level in history, allowing the U.S. to admit just 7,500 refugees — down from the 125,000 cap set under Biden. He also said white South Africans should be prioritized for the few available slots.
The directive was sharply criticized by refugee advocates.
“Refugees admitted under the U.S. refugee resettlement program have undergone some of the most rigorous vetting of any immigrant lawfully admitted into the United States, yet this sweeping re-interview initiative is nothing less than a calculated effort to strip lawful status from thoroughly-vetted, law-abiding people,” Myal Greene, president of World Relief, a refugee group, said in a statement.
“It is a moral and ethical betrayal of due process at a time when the Trump administration is attempting to lower the standard for refugee admissions to include Afrikaners and others who do not meet the legal standard of a ‘well-founded fear of persecution’ that past refugees have been required to meet,” Greene added.
Shawn Van Diver, president of AfghanEvac, saw the move as widely damaging but designed to target those who were airlifted out of Afghanistan by U.S. forces during the 2021 withdrawal of troops from the nation.
“Families who survived war, persecution, and the chaos of America’s withdrawal now find themselves forced back into instability by their own government. These individuals have already passed the most exhaustive vetting processes in the world — multiple agencies, biometric checks, layered security reviews,” he wrote in a statement. “They rebuilt their lives here. They trusted the system. This is unprecedented and cruel.”
“USCIS is positioning itself to revoke refugee status by implying without evidence that thousands of Afghans fabricated the persecution they survived,” Van Diver continued. “That is not just wrong; it’s defamatory and reckless.”
USCIS did not immediately respond to request for comment.