Trump Nominates ‘America First’ Ally to Oversee Refugee Resettlement

President Trump has nominated “America First” immigration expert Ronald Mortensen to oversee refugee resettlement to the United States.

Mortensen, if confirmed, will head the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, the agency that is tasked with resettling foreign refugees across the U.S.

Trump nominated Mortensen on Thursday, according to the Washington Post, to serve as the top official of the agency. Mortensen is a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for less legal immigration to boost the wages and quality of life of American citizens.

In his most recent work, Mortensen stressed the importance of opposing an amnesty for illegal aliens, noting that Americans who have been harmed by illegal immigration would not see any benefits from such a plan.

As Breitbart News’s Michael Patrick Leahy has chronicled, Trump has steadily slowed the flow of foreign refugee resettlement to the U.S. Last month, less than 1,700 refugees were admitted to the country. By the end of 2018, the Trump administration is expected to have admitted less than 21,000 refugees.

The Trump administration is also eyeing a plan to remove the refugee resettlement program from the State Department’s control, Leahy reported.

In the last decade, Breitbart News reported, the U.S. has admitted and resettled more foreign nationals for humanitarian reasons than the entire population of the city of Philadelphia, with nearly two million arriving since 2008.