A new policy memo from the Trump administration is spreading panic throughout San Diego’s refugee population.
The memo, issued by the Department of Homeland Security last week, says refugees who haven’t applied for a green card within one year of arriving in the U.S. can be detained.
This is the first time in memory that the federal government has threatened detention based on the timing of a green card application. In fact, the DHS memo says the previous policy, “was not considered a proper basis for detention.”
“This is really causing terror in the community,” said Maria Chavez, immigration legal director at the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans, or PANA.
San Diego has a history of welcoming refugee populations – dating back to the Vietnam War era when over 50,000 Vietnamese nationals lived in a temporary refugee camp in Camp Pendleton.
Since then, San Diego has become the headquarters of multiple resettlement agencies, including Jewish Family Service and the International Rescue Committee. Between 1983 and 2004, San Diego received more refugees than Miami, Houston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Dallas and Phoenix, according to a report by Brookings Institution.
When refugees resettle in the United States, they can adjust their status to become legal permanent residents by obtaining a green card.
The Trump administration’s official rationale for detaining refugees is so the federal government can again vet them to ensure they are not a threat to public safety, according to the DHS memo.
But part of what makes the new policy so controversial is refugees already go through multiple rounds of extensive vetting, Chavez said. Unlike asylum seekers, who apply for protection after they enter the country, refugees are vetted before they set foot in the United States.
“There’s a very rigorous vetting process that goes through the United Nations,” Chavez said. “From there, refugees are resettled in different countries, the United States being one of them.”
Following the UN vetting process, our federal government does its own vetting before a refugee can board a plane bound for the United States. Refugees are also re-vetted when they apply for work permits, she added.
Those who help refugees adjust to life in the United States said there are a number of reasons why they would put off applying for a green card.
“Just because they arrived to the United States, doesn’t mean they’re handed everything on a silver platter,” Chavez said. “They still have to figure out housing, they still have to figure out food and work. And yes, they do have some help, but that doesn’t mean anything is easier for them.”
Given the new policy memo, Chaves says every refugee should begin the application process as soon as possible.
President Trump has targeted refugees in multiple ways during his second term. During his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order that temporarily halted the entire refugee program.
The administration has also made helping refugees resettle in the United States much more difficult by defunding nonprofits that provided direct aid to refugee populations.
It’s unclear how many people in San Diego County could be detained under the new DHS policy. Data from San Diego County shows more than 5,000 refugees arrived in San Diego last year — mostly from Afghanistan, Haiti and Syria.
However, the county’s data is likely an undercount because their data only includes refugees brought to San Diego under federal resettlement programs.
The data does not include people who were resettled in one county but later moved to San Diego or people who were resettled in San Diego but have since moved away. The data also does not track whether people have already applied for a green card, a San Diego County spokesperson said.
