A number of refugees who were approved for travel to the U.S. have had their flights canceled, CNN reports, panicking vulnerable people who worry that they’ll now be left in limbo or sent back to danger, and alarming resettlement offices that have already been working and planning to welcome families to the country into October.
“The International Organization for Migration, which is in charge of booking refugees on their travel, sent cancellation notices out Monday morning. A notice obtained by CNN includes the travel itinerary for individuals whose travel was booked for October and canceled. The stated reason for cancellation: ‘FY20 moratorium extension.’ The notice doesn't provide an end date for the extension.”
Both families and their advocates are looking for answers. "The first thing is to obviously let our local resettlement offices know,” said Naomi Steinberg of advocacy group HIAS. “They have the deeply upsetting task of telling families who have been waiting for years that there's a delay. These are real families that are going to be torn apart by this for who knows how much longer."
Under the watch of White House aide and white supremacist Stephen Miller, these vulnerable families have been traumatized even more, with the administration last year slashing refugee admissions to a record-low 30,000. Resettlement agencies tasked with helping these families have been forced to close some offices, with one advocate calling it “a systematic dismantling of the refugee-resettlement infrastructure by the administration, either directly or indirectly.”
“The administration has yet to announce next year's cap” on refugees, CNN noted, but in July a Miller-allied official reportedly floated slashing the number of refugees that can be admitted to the U.S. next year “to nearly zero.” Meanwhile, “Homeland Security Department officials at the meeting later floated making the level anywhere from 3,000 to 10,000, according to one of the people.”
