One hundred Syrian refugees rushed into the country on Monday, the first full week day after Federal District Judge James Robart issued a temporary restraining order halting key elements of President Donald Trump’s immigration executive order, “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States.”
A total of 113 refugees from three countries entered the United States on Monday, according to the State Department’s interactive website: 100 were from Syria, 12 were from Iraq, and one was from Somalia.
The three were among the seven countries on which President Trump imposed a temporary ban in the issuance of visas by an executive order President Trump signed on January 27 and which Judge Robarts stopped nationwide with a temporary restraining order Friday.
The other four countries on that list were Iran, Libya, Yemen, and Sudan.
All 113 refugees who entered the country were Muslims, according to the State Department. No refugees who were Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, or any religion other than Islam entered the country on Monday.
Judge Robart’s temporary restraining order also stopped President Trump’s temporary ban on refugees from all countries. It did not, however, stop the section of President Trump’s executive order that limits the number of refugees who can enter the country in Fiscal Year 2017 to 50,000.
As of Tuesday morning, 33,081 refugees have entered the country to date in FY 2017, which means that between now and September 30, 2016, the last day of FY 2017, only 16,919 more refugees will be able to enter the country.
In FY 2016, the last full year of former President Obama’s administration, 84,995 refugees arrived in the United States.
The states of Washington and Minnesota were the plaintiffs who requested Judge Robart halt President Trump’s executive order temporarily banning visas from the seven Middle Eastern countries and temporarily banning refugees.
One of the refugees, the lone Somali to arrive, was initially resettled in Minnesota. Minneapolis has the largest Somali community in the United States, estimated to be about 70,000 in total.
As Breitbart News reported previously, during the five years between 2010 and 2014, 40 percent of all cases of active tuberculosis (TB) diagnosed in Minnesota, or 296 out of 732 total cases, were diagnosed in refugees, who account for about one percent of the state’s population.
Two hundred and ninety-six refugees were diagnosed with active tuberculosis (TB) between 2010 and 2014 in Minnesota, according to the Minnesota Department of Health. . .
During the five years between 2010 and 2014, 732 cases of active TB were diagnosed in Minnesota. Of these, 81 percent, or 593, were foreign-born. Of foreign-born cases, 50 percent, or 296, were refugees, according to “The Epidemiology of Tuberculosis in Minnesota, 2010-2014,” a report published by the Minnesota Department of Health.
“Twenty-nine percent of the 593 foreign-born cases of active TB diagnosed in Minnesota, or 161, were attributed to Somali born migrants. Almost all Somali migrants to the United States have arrived under the federal refugee resettlement program,” Breitbart reported.
None of the 113 refugees who arrived on Monday were resettled in the state of Washington.
Seven of the 113 refugees who arrived on Monday, all Syrians, were initially resettled in Troy, Michigan, which is in Oakland County.
Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson said in September he intended to sue the federal government for the placement of hundreds of refugees within his jurisdiction without consulting with local government, as Breitbart News reported at the time:
Patterson broke the news on the Frank Beckmann Show, on WJR radio in Detroit.
“I’ve brought in my legal team from the county, and we’re about to sue them [the federal government] to get an injunction to stop them from relocating more people into this community until the rules are adhered to,” Patterson told Beckmann.
“The federal law could not be more specific,” Patterson continued.
“It wasn’t you [the federal government] may want to inform local county officials” about resettling refugees in their jurisdiction, the county executive added. “It says you shall inform the local county officials.” (emphasis added)
Section 5(g) of the Jan 27 executive order signed by President Trump, which Judge Robart did not address in his temporary restraining order, states “It is the policy of the executive branch that, to the extent permitted by law and as practicable, State and local jurisdictions be granted a role in the process of determining the placement or settlement in their jurisdictions of aliens eligible to be admitted to the United States as refugees .”
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.