Q&A: Why Challenging the Trump Administration’s Ban on Refugee Resettlement Is So Important
On Monday January 20, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order indefinitely stopping resettlement of refugees in the United States through the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP). Within a few days, the Departments of State, Homeland Security, and Health and Human services suspended all USRAP processing and refugee-related funding, including to non-profit, non-governmental resettlement agencies. This stranded and betrayed thousands of refugees abroad already approved for resettlement, left refugees recently resettled in the United States without support, and led to lay-offs of thousands of resettlement agency staff.
In Pacito v. Trump, the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) represents a diverse group of plaintiffs affected by these Trump administration policies. These include refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and El Salvador whose resettlement has been halted; U.S.-based parents whose children are now unable to join them; a U.S. citizen who arranged to sponsor a refugee family from Afghanistan through the Welcome Corps; a recently resettled Iraqi refugee who has been denied resettlement benefits; two national resettlement agencies—Church World Service and HIAS; and Lutheran Community Services Northwest, a local affiliate of a resettlement agency.
IRAP has argued that the Trump administration’s policies irredeemably harm the plaintiffs, unlawfully violate the Refugee Act of 1980 (which established USRAP and how it is to be administered), and are arbitrary and capricious because they are unjustified and irregular. A federal district court judge in Seattle agreed. But on March 25, a panel of Ninth Circuit judges stayed the lower court’s ruling while it decides the case on the merits. Currently, resettlement remains suspended except for select individual refugees with “a strong reliance interest” (such as having given up their homes and jobs) who had confirmed travel plans to the United States on or before January 20, 2025.
Refugees International’s director for the Americas and Europe Yael Schacher submitted an amicus brief to the Ninth Circuit in support of the plaintiffs. On World Refugee Day, she explains the argument of the brief and what is at stake in the case.
Q: Why did you write this brief?
I have been shocked by how quickly the Trump administration has moved to destroy USRAP and to adopt immigration policies reminiscent of a century ago– when the very existence of refugees was denied and people from Asia were legally barred from immigrating. United States law and policy have changed dramatically since then, with the abandonment of racist bars and national origin quotas and the advent of refugee and asylum law. During its first six months in office, the Trump administration has paid little heed to any of this–and indeed has deliberately undermined the resettlement system that has developed since WWII and mocked the principles that underlie it.
The January 20 executive order misportrays resettled refugees as a burden on American communities. But, the U.S. government’s own studies have shown they are an asset, and more than 300 bipartisan state and local leaders nationwide recently attested to the same. The Executive Order also asserts that the United States will henceforth resettle refugees who can “appropriately assimilate into the United States” and will “preserve taxpayer resources for its citizens.” But it’s not the President’s prerogative to define a refugee and who should be resettled based on some racist notion of assimilability. Nor does the President determine how U.S. taxpayer dollars are spent. Congress does. Congress, in the 1980 Refugee Act, said USRAP is for people from anywhere in the world who fear persecution and who are of special humanitarian concern. To me, the ban on refugees exemplifies this administration’s abuse of power, disdain for humanitarian immigration, and xenophobia.
The administration suspended USRAP on a Monday and by Friday ended funding for resettlement agencies and then canceled cooperative agreements with them– treating as expendable the organizations that have been crucial implementing partners of USRAP for decades. As an historian of refugee policy, I was floored to read a press release from the United Conference of Catholic Bishops that it was ending its 80 year old work with the U.S. government on resettlement. A few weeks later, Episcopal Migration Ministries announced that it too would end its resettlement work and its refusal– in line with its “steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation and historic ties with the Anglican church” in South Africa– to support a group of Afrikaners suddenly selected and flown to the United States by the Trump administration. The resettlement of Afrikaners circumvented the normal procedures of USRAP and made a mockery of the persecution and suffering of the refugees – who had waited years to be vetted and approved– now banned by the administration.
Q: What is the main argument of the brief?
The brief is about the history of refugee resettlement and the role of the resettlement agencies in particular. Since the World War II era, resettlement agencies have worked abroad to screen and find U.S. sponsors for refugees and to help refugees find jobs and integrate into U.S. communities. Their work has been driven by a humanitarian mission to alleviate suffering and to promote refugee self-sufficiency after arrival in the United States. In the brief, I argue that the Refugee Act of 1980 codified this effort.
The Act’s objective, according to the words of the statute, was “to provide a permanent and systematic procedure for the admission to this country of refugees of special humanitarian concern to the United States, and to provide comprehensive and uniform provisions for the effective resettlement and absorption of those refugees who are admitted.” The law codified a process of consultation between Congress and the President designating certain refugees as priorities for resettlement and setting the target number of refugees to be resettled annually. My brief shows how recognition of the need for this process grew out of the experience of resettlement agencies after the war in Vietnam. Further, in authorizing federal expenditure on USRAP and benefits for refugees, the law explicitly recognized the approaches of the resettlement agencies to helping refugees find jobs and learn English. The Refugee Act explicitly geared refugee assistance towards the goal of “achieving economic self-sufficiency.”
Q: What’s at stake in this case?
Provision 212f of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1182(f), gives the President the authority “to suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens” whenever the President “finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.” The main issue at stake is whether this provision gives the administration the authority to zero out refugee resettlement. Are the courts going to uphold the power of the President to altogether undermine refuge in the United States?
The Ninth Circuit seems inclined to interpret the precedent set in the 2018 travel ban case– Trump v. Hawaii– to give the President broad power over USRAP, writing that 8 U.S.C. § 1182(f) “exudes deference” to the President. The lower court in Seattle pointed out, however, that deference to the President is misplaced when grounded not in power over foreign affairs but domestic concerns, as is President Trump’s January 20 Executive order with its focus on the economic impact of refugees on American communities, tax-payer resources, and “appropriate assimilation.” There is no historical evidence that Congress intended the 212f provision to nullify all other provisions in the immigration law. The provision has been used mostly to bar the entry of repressive or corrupt policymakers, officials or human rights abusers and those connected to them from certain countries. But it was also invoked to stop Haitian asylum seekers from reaching U.S. shores, a policy shamefully upheld by the Supreme Court in 1993.
I wrote my brief to emphasize to the court that the United States has a history of humanitarianism and immigration laws supporting refugees that cannot simply be disregarded – lest we revert to some of the indefensible moments of our past. A majority of Americans support refugee resettlement–and so the election of President Trump was not a mandate to dismantle USRAP. As I write in the brief:
“Refugees who are well-supported in their resettlement contribute economically to U.S. communities and refugee sponsorship by U.S. citizens fosters civic engagement in local and world affairs valuable to American democracy.”