After having the lowest number of refugees resettled for FY17 last month, a State Department spokesperson has said they will increase the number of refugees resettled to 900 individuals per week. Under this policy they would resettle 65,000 refugees by the end of the fiscal year, an increase from the 50,000 cap that Pres. Trump set in his executive order.
“In accordance with the Court Order, and consistent with both our operational capacity and our capacity under available funding, we have increased the current pace of refugee arrivals to approximately 900 individuals per week,” a State Department spokesperson told The Huffington Post.
Only 2,070 refugees were resettled in March, a 54.79% decrease from February. According to State Department Refugee Processing Center data the number of refugees resettled has been steadily declining since Oct. 2016.
In both his Jan. 27 executive order and his revised executive order Pres. Trump set the refugee cap to 50,000 bringing it down from the 110,000 cap Pres. Obama had previously set.
In response to the executive orders the State Department had dropped the number of refugees resettled to 400 per week. However, both executive orders have been blocked by federal judges causing the cap to revert to the 110,000 goal.
So far for FY17 39,098 refugees have been resettled in the U.S., of those only 8,976 refugees have been resettled since Pres. Trump took office on Jan. 20.
Read more on this story at CNSNews.com.
