U.S. to Allow Refugees From All Countries but With New Rules

Wall Street Journal

By Laura Meckler and Shane Harris

October 24, 2017

U.S. to Allow Refugees From All Countries but With New Rules

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration will allow refugee admissions to the U.S. to resume for all countries but with new rules meant to better vet applicants, administration officials and others familiar with the planning said.

The White House plans to announce the resumption of admissions and at least some of the new rules on Tuesday, officials said. Refugee admissions had generally been halted in June, with some exceptions.

Under the new rules, the administration will collect more biographical data, such as names of family members and places of employment, officials said. The administration will also do more to mine social media posts to see, for instance, if refugees’ public pronouncements are consistent with the stories they offer in their applications, the officials said.

In addition, officials who do the screening at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, will be given new guidance and better training aimed at detecting fraud on the part of applicants, one person said.

The refugee program was put on hold in June for 120 days as part of the larger travel ban ordered by President Donald Trump designed to thwart potential terrorists. That period expires on Tuesday.

Under the new order being issued, refugee admissions will resume for all countries. However, one person familiar with the planning said that people from 11 targeted countries will be subject to additional vetting that will slow down the process for them.

The vetting process can be particularly challenging because applicants have been forced to flee their home countries and often don’t have documents that are helpful in confirming identity and other details typically used in screening. In addition, their home countries are often unwilling or unable to cooperate.

Advocates for refugees have long pointed to the lengthy process that applicants undergo already and say that the existing vetting process is more than adequate.

“The United States’ refugee vetting procedures—which include extensive and comprehensive interviews as well as multiple rounds of security vetting with an array of U.S. and international intelligence and law enforcement agencies—are widely recognized as the most stringent in the world,” said a statement last month from the advocacy group Human Rights First. The group cited support for the program from national security officials in both political parties.

But in his executive order, Mr. Trump painted refugees as a much more dangerous group.

“Since 2001, hundreds of persons born abroad have been convicted of terrorism-related crimes in the United States,” the order said. “They have included not just persons who came here legally on visas but also individuals who first entered the country as refugees.”

The Obama administration also sought to increase vetting of social media posts, but officials involved say their efforts were limited in part because the process is labor intensive. It is unclear how the Trump administration will meet that challenge.

The administration has already announced that it is limiting the number of refugees to be admitted this fiscal year 2018 to 45,000. That is less than half the number President Barack Obama set for fiscal year 2017 and down from the revised 2017 figure set at 50,000 by Mr. Trump. Some in the Trump administration had pushed for the number to be set even lower.

Write to Laura Meckler at laura.meckler@wsj.com and Shane Harris at shane.harris@wsj.com

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