Report: DHS Suspends Trips Abroad To Interview Refugees

President-elect Donald Trump speaks at a rally at Hy-Vee Hall, Thursday, Dec. 8, 2016, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
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With the expectation that President Donald Trump will soon sign an executive order to temporarily shut down the United States’ refugee resettlement program, the Department of Homeland Security has postponed planned trips abroad to interview refugee applicants, according to a Reuters report.

Trump is reportedly planning to sign an executive order soon that would suspend the country’s refugee program for 120 days and end the admittance of Syrian refugees indefinitely. The order would also suspend issuing visas for those coming from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen for 30 days, according to the New York Times.

A spokeswoman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Gillian Christensen, told Reuters that DHS has postponed “a number of upcoming trips” but that the trips were not “officially canceled.”

Becca Heller, the director of the International Refugee Assistance Project at the New York-based Urban Justice Center, told Reuters that she was informed by several people both in and out of the federal government, that the trips had been suspended.

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Notable Replies

  1. How many people died because we wouldn’t take Jews fleeing Nazi Germany prior to entering WWII?

    Never forget, my ass.

  2. Back then Jews were seen as “other” and would never have been lumped with the good Christian folk. Today we talk about Judeo-Christian values.

    Maybe in 50 years we will be talking about Abrahamic values, or perhaps I am being ridiculously optimistic.

  3. JeWs areNt musliMs anD jeWs didn’t do terroR. EvEr. MusliMs did teRRor on themselveS and BlamE the Jew.

  4. No snark for this. It’s utterly contemptible. And as I recall the GOP leadership pretty roundly condemned the idea of a ban when Trump first proposed it. But he wasn’t looking likely to win at that point, so situational ethics and all that. So ashamed for my country.

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