With the expectation that President Donald Trump will soon sign an executive order to temporarily shut down the United States’ refugee resettlement program, the Department of Homeland Security has postponed planned trips abroad to interview refugee applicants, according to a Reuters report.
Trump is reportedly planning to sign an executive order soon that would suspend the country’s refugee program for 120 days and end the admittance of Syrian refugees indefinitely. The order would also suspend issuing visas for those coming from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen for 30 days, according to the New York Times.
A spokeswoman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Gillian Christensen, told Reuters that DHS has postponed “a number of upcoming trips” but that the trips were not “officially canceled.”
Becca Heller, the director of the International Refugee Assistance Project at the New York-based Urban Justice Center, told Reuters that she was informed by several people both in and out of the federal government, that the trips had been suspended.