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The Obama administration has thrown of a wall of silence around its plan to bring about 2,500 refugees into America, some from nations on a terror watch list.
The United States has agreed to resettle 2,465 people that were rejected by Australia.
“This is a backroom deal, wheeling and dealing with another country’s refugee problem,” Don Barnett, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, told Fox News. “I don’t believe for a moment it’s a one-time deal. That’s for public consumption.”
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Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., have voiced their objections in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and Secretary of State John Kerry.
“This situation is concerning for many reasons,” the letter said. “First, your departments negotiated an international agreement regarding refugees without consulting or notifying Congress.”
“Second,” it said, “the agreement and the number of refugees to be resettled has been deemed by your departments as classified, thus the American people are left in the dark as to the rationale for this agreement.”
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“Third, the individuals who will be resettled are coming from countries of national security concern,” the letter said.
The letter asked why Australia refused to resettle the refugees.
“If they’ve been vetted and deemed inadmissible, the U.S. can’t say, ‘You don’t want them, so we’ll take them,’” said Barnett.
The greatest issue, however, was the secrecy under which the deal has been conducted.
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Grassley and Goodlatte have been offered a classified briefing on the agreement, but want Americans whose home towns may one day receive these refugees to know what’s happening.
“We … firmly believe the American people should be fully aware of the specific details of this agreement and why it was done in secret,” their letter said.
Many Americans also don’t like the little they have heard.
2500 refugees who don't want to assimilate, coming to US from Australia. Can we sue Feds if they commit an act of terror on US soil?
— Anthony Zona (@ZonaTon) December 2, 2016
So #Australia refuses to take these #refugees from ME so we take them? https://t.co/MY9P82Ct21
— Karen S (@ksdvm86) December 1, 2016
The secrecy is an anomaly; numbers of refugees being considered for resettlement are usually made public.
Fox News reported that officials said the refugees will come from Iran, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq and Sudan, as well as some labeled “stateless.”
Iran, Sudan and Syria are on America’s list of State Sponsors of Terrorism. Barnett said those labeled “stateless” are also threats.
“These could be Burmese Muslims, who have posed assimilation issues for every nation which has taken them,” he told Fox News. “It’s a dangerous precedent which says, ‘We’ll take any ethnic group with which you don’t get along.’”
In reporting on the Australian refugee deal, Fox News noted that Australia has said it will increase the number of refugees it takes from Central America, sparking “speculation that the deal is a trade of refugees from the most dangerous areas of the world for ones from Central America.”
Although officials from the State Department have begun the process of vetting the refugees for admission into the United States, the status of the program is uncertain due to the change in administrations when President-elect Donald Trump assumes office. Trump has been a strident critic of the Obama administration’s policies on refugees.
Further complicating the Obama plan is that not all refugees want to come to the United States now that Trump will be its leader.
“The President-elect Donald Trump doesn’t like Muslims in his country as a migrant,” said Aziz Khan of Myanmar, who is being held at a refugee detention center.
