The Trump administration said it would cut its rock-bottom refugee admissions still deeper into record territory for the coming year, as President Donald Trump returned to anti-immigrant themes in the closing month of his re-election campaign, the New York Times reports. The change in the number of refugees that Trump plans to admit is not drastic: no more than 15,000 in the year that began Thursday, down from 18,000 in the 2020 fiscal year, which was a record low. President Barack Obama approved 110,000 slots in 2016. The new cut signaled that Trump is willing to take his exclusionary immigration policies further. It was delivered as the president unleashed a xenophobic tirade against one of the nation’s most prominent refugees, Rep. Ilhan Omar, at a rally in her home state, Minnesota.
The president must tell Congress at the end of September the maximum number of refugees that will be allowed entry into the U.S. for the following year. The president and his political advisers believe that the largely successful effort to seal off the U.S. from asylum seekers and refugees fleeing persecution, war and violence is a winning campaign issue. Trump has tried to link Omar’s liberal politics to Joe Biden, who has said he would reset the refugee cap at 125,000 if elected. “Biden will turn Minnesota into a refugee camp,” Trump said. The 15,000 cap is the latest step in one of Trump’s central aims: to close the U.S. to immigrants.