Trump administration plans to reinterview refugees admitted under Biden: Report

The Trump administration is planning to re-interview potentially tens of thousands of refugees who were admitted to the US under former President Joe Biden, according to a report by CNN published on Monday. 

According to a 21 November leaked memo, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services will carry out a “review and reinterview process” to ensure the refugees admitted under the Biden administration do not pose “a national security or public safety threat”, CNN reported.

Roughly 235,000 refugees entered the US after being approved for admission between fiscal year 2021 and fiscal year 2025, CNN said. 

The report did not say which refugees or countries of origin might specifically be re-examined. 

According to the memo, Citizenship and Immigration Services could terminate a refugee's status if it found cause, with no mechanism to appeal the decision. 

The memo is part of a broader crackdown by the Trump administration on the established system the US has to host refugees. 

Last month, the administration announced plans to drastically cut back the number of refugees accepted annually by the US to a record low.

Under the new policy, the US would welcome only 7,500 refugees in fiscal year 2026, down from more than 100,000 a year under Democratic President Joe Biden. And the vast majority of those refugee admissions would go to white South Africans. 

US refugee admissions to be cut to record low, white South Africans prioritised: Report

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The Biden administration significantly increased the number of refugee slots following the first Trump administration’s move to slash the available positions. The current admission process was established by the Refugee Act of 1980.

In practice, the Biden administration did not admit as many refugees as its annual cap allowed. 

Over the fiscal years of his administration, the number of refugees admitted was 25,465 in 2022; 60,014 in 2023; 100,034 in 2024; and 27,308 in 2025, according to data from the Migration Policy Institute.

White South Africans 

Trump's decision to suspend the country's refugee resettlement programme in his administration's early days left 12,000 vulnerable people in limbo who had been conditionally approved for resettlement and had flights booked before 20 January, as well as almost 90,000 others who had been approved for resettlement.

The US vetting process for refugees typically takes 18 to 24 months, according to the State Department's website. 

The one group that has been an exception and seen their cases expedited is South Africa’s white farmers.

The US says white South Africans are being persecuted, but South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and a delegation of white South Africans who visited Trump in the Oval Office earlier this year denied the allegation of a "white genocide" as baseless.