THE TALK OF THE TOWN

The chaos of Donald Trump’s Presidency often obscures its rank consistency.

-  —Jonathan Blitzer

Only a few hours into his second term, Trump signed an executive order suspending the admission of refugees to the United States, something that he'd tried to do his first time in office. Twelve thousand people who had been cleared to come were stranded, their flights cancelled. A hundred and eighteen thousand others had been approved but didn't yet have plane tickets. Some, including Iraqis and Afghans who had been targeted in their home countries for helping the U.S. military, filed a lawsuit, alongside a group of resettlement organizations. Eventually, a federal appeals court instructed the Administration to admit anyone whose flight had been scheduled on or before January 20th; it has shown no sign that it will comply. In 2017, when Trump banned refugees from certain Muslim-majority countries, the legal challenges they filed took almost all his first term to sort out. Many of them were still waiting abroad to learn their fate when he returned to the White House this year.

In the meantime, according to the executive order, the U.S. will “admit only those refugees who can fully and appropriately assimilate into the United States.” Less than a month later, the Administration made clear who that might be. A February executive order, called “Addressing Egregious Actions of the Republic of South Africa,” blamed that nation’s government for perpetrating racism against white people. In May, fifty-nine Afrikaners were flown to the U.S. Stephen Miller, the President’s top immigration adviser in both terms, hailed their case as “the textbook definition of why the refugee program was created.” They were, he said, the victims of “race-based persecution.”