Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in an interview with ABC on April 18, defended the Biden administration’s decision to maintain Trump-era refugee caps amid capacity constraints.
President Joe Biden stated in the directive that the admission of up to 15,000 refugees this fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30, “is justified by grave humanitarian concerns and is otherwise in the national interest.”
Biden justified the lower cap by citing “an unforeseen emergency refugee situation ... due to new or increasing political violence, repression, atrocities, or humanitarian crises” in a number of countries, as well as “changing conditions caused by the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic.”
“The problem was that the refugee part was working on the crisis that ended up on the border with young people. We couldn’t do two things at once. But now we are going to increase the number,” he said, referring to his intention to raise the cap in May.
Biden’s use of the word “crisis” was a rare admission of the severity of the border surge. Republicans have long insisted on calling the influx of illegal immigrants a crisis in their criticism of the Biden administration’s decision to roll back some Trump-era border policies, a move they and some experts argue is fueling the border surge. The White House has avoided using the term in its communications, opting instead to call it a “challenge,” while blaming former President Donald Trump’s policies for leaving the refugee admissions program “decimated.”
“The refugee system that we found was not in place, did not have the resources—the means—to effectively process as many people as we hoped,” Blinken told ABC.
Blinken added that the Biden administration would “revisit [the cap] in the middle of May,” while declining to speculate what number above 15,000 it might be raised to, or whether he believes the administration will hit its target of 125,000 refugee admissions in the following fiscal year.
“Look, the president has been clear about where he wants to go, but we have to be, you know, focused on what we’re able to do when we’re able to do it,” Blinken said.
Biden’s decision to keep the Trump-era cap was met with blowback from advocacy groups and top Democrats on Capitol Hill, such as Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who called the limit “unacceptable.”
“Refugees who have been fully vetted by U.S. officials will now continue to wait in vulnerable situations, as this decision leaves them in continued limbo.”
