The Safe Mobility Office Initiative, launched in May 2023 and given expanded capacity this spring, has worked to fly tens of thousands of people to the U.S. through the refugee resettlement process, despite those people being of nationalities that have rarely qualified for refugee status, according to a Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) analysis.
The expansion of the program comes despite the U.S. traditionally only granting refugee status to individuals who can credibly claim that they cannot return to their home country out of a “well-founded fear” of persecution on the basis of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group, but the CIS analysis argued that many of those coming to the U.S. would more normally be classified as economic migrants.
The administration has also raised the allotted slots to admit refugees from Latin America, from less than 5,000 when President Biden took office to 50,000 in 2024.
“That means no vetting is happening,” Ries said. “So they have no idea who they’re letting in.”