Trump administration’s actions raise ‘serious concerns’ for judge overseeing refugee suit
A Tacoma-based nonprofit assisting refugees entering the United States claimed a momentary victory last week in its legal challenge to the Trump administration’s suspension of the U.S. refugee-resettlement program.
A federal judge in Seattle on Feb. 25 temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order that halted refugee arrivals under the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) and paused funding to long-serving groups that help people fleeing persecution to resettle in the country.
The State Department took a decisive step one day later: It issued notices to national resettlement agencies, one of which is affiliated with the Tacoma nonprofit, that their cooperative agreements were terminated.
The notices go farther than the program suspension’s temporary pause in funding and “purport to stop funding for the USRAP as well as for services to Special Immigrant Visa holders,” according to a recent court filing from attorneys representing the nonprofit and others.
In a court filing this week, Justice Department lawyers denied trying to flout the court’s nationwide preliminary injunction. They attributed the timing of notices to the State Department’s expedited review of thousands of contract awards, which they said was prompted by other litigation.
During an emergency hearing Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead, who earlier granted the preliminary injunction, called it “a remarkable coincidence” that the notices had been sent within 24 hours of his order.
“The timing of the government’s decision to terminate the contracts of the resettlement agencies, just one day after the court issued its preliminary injunction, raises serious concerns about whether these actions are designed to circumvent the court’s ruling,” Whitehead said.
Whitehead also suggested that the apparent “hasty terminations” of contracts for the nation’s 10 resettlement agencies were likely to be unlawful, like the USRAP suspension, due to the government’s failure to provide a reasoned explanation, disregard for statutory mandates and potential arbitrary decision-making.
He also said the preliminary injunction, which the government has appealed, didn’t extend to the termination notices. The notices, he added, seemed to constitute a new action that required a separate legal analysis and new pleadings from the dozen plaintiffs who have sued the Trump administration.
Tacoma-based Lutheran Community Services Northwest (LCSNW), two national resettlement agencies and nine individual refugees filed a federal lawsuit last month over the USRAP suspension.
LCSNW has provided a range of social and family services to low-income communities for decades and — as an affiliate of Global Refuge, a resettlement agency not part of the lawsuit — also assists refugees to get on their feet upon arriving in the United States.
The work is integral to refugees’ success because it helps with needs such as rent, food and clothing and identifying jobs for parents and schools for children within a 90-day period, according to LCSNW CEO David Duea.
In suing the Trump administration, plaintiffs alleged that thousands of refugees who recently arrived in America and thousands more in the pipeline had been abandoned. Thousands of employees in the United States and overseas also have been furloughed or laid off, they said.
Justice Department attorney August Flentje told Whitehead that the work of resettlement agencies in the United States was “discretionary” and not mandatory. He argued that the termination notices were lawful and noted that some grants for refugee services overseas remained intact.
Whitehead said that the plaintiffs may file an amended legal complaint and update the injunction they seek. He also ordered the government to soon issue a status report on its efforts to resume refugee processing.
He did not render a decision on a request Monday by the Trump administration to pause the legal proceedings after Justice Department lawyers argued in a court filing that the nationwide scope of the injunction was unlawful and that the government was likely to prevail in the case.
Circumventing or coincidence?
When Trump suspended the refugee program by an executive order that went into effect Jan. 27, he cited “record levels” of migration into the United States over the past four years and the country’s inability to effectively handle it. His order called for a review of the suspension every 90 days.
The USRAP was established by Congress’ bipartisan passage of the Refugee Act of 1980, and the United States has accepted more than 3 million refugees since then, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Homeland Security Statistics. The president annually determines overall admissions levels for the upcoming fiscal year.
Melissa Keaney, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, said Tuesday that the termination notices to resettlement agencies made clear that Trump’s plan all along was to dismantle the program.
“The Trump administration’s flagrant attempts to undermine that (court) order show that the suspension of the refugee program was never meant to be temporary,” Keaney said in a statement.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs requested Tuesday’s hearing in an effort to get the court to intervene in what they viewed to be the government’s attempt to get around the preliminary injunction.
Without intervention, the court order would be rendered meaningless because there aren’t any pathways for refugees to complete processing, enter the country or receive initial resettlement services without USRAP funding, they said in a court filing.
Justice Department lawyers said the termination notices stemmed from a Washington, D.C.-based lawsuit over frozen foreign aid. The federal court presiding over that case found that the Trump administration couldn’t outright suspend the congressionally approved dollars but could, in good faith, individually assess contracts and grants, lawyers said in a court filing.
After subsequently reviewing contracts, the State Department retained roughly 2,700 awards and terminated approximately 4,100, including cooperative agreements with the resettlement agencies, according to the filing.
“If I recall, the suspension was designed so that Secretary (Marco) Rubio could evaluate all this money going out the door and determine if it did serve agency priorities,” Flentje said during Tuesday’s hearing. “That was designed to be a process that would last 90 days. Obviously, it happened much quicker than that given various court orders.”
He said that the Trump administration has given direction to resume refugee applications and entries, but he couldn’t provide details about what kind of travel arrangements had restarted. He also asserted that some money had been paid to resettlement agencies for work already performed.
The Trump administration’s own court filing suggested that it hadn’t taken any steps to implement the court’s preliminary injunction, Keaney said during Tuesday’s hearing.
“None of the plaintiffs in the case have received any sort of communications that suggest that their applications have resumed processing or that there’s any sort of effort to, for example, re-book travel for the many thousands of refugees who had their travel canceled,” she said.
Keaney also argued that the USRAP’s defunding had brought “profound practical consequences” for her clients, including the resettlement agency, HIAS, Inc., which she said has been forced since last week to lay off nearly 200 more staff members.
