Biden on track to beat Trump’s record for fewest resettled refugees

The Biden administration is on track to resettle the lowest number of refugees in the history of the program despite big promises it would revamp a system decimated under former President TrumpDonald TrumpNo silver bullet for crisis at the Southern border Who’s the boss? Pelosi’s legacy sealed after kowtowing to ‘the Squad’ Biden on track to beat Trump’s record for fewest resettled refugees MORE.

The administration had resettled 7,637 refugees by the end of August — a figure experts say makes it near impossible to reach the 11,814 low point under the Trump administration by the close of the fiscal year that ended Friday.

The final figures are expected in the coming days, but advocates say both COVID-19 and a series of missteps by President BidenJoe BidenTop GOP senator: ‘Far-left Democrats are driving the bus and Joe Biden is just along for the ride’ Political study should give Democrats a jolt Fauci says it’s a ‘false narrative’ to think COVID-19 vaccine not needed if Merck drug approved MORE led to just a trickle of refugees from a White House that during the campaign pledged to resettle as many as 125,000 people a year through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.

“It is quite disappointing how few refugees were actually resettled this year. I don’t think that was inevitable. I think it was the result of policy choices and what to prioritize,” Sunil Varghese with the International Refugee Assistance Project told The Hill, stressing that the coronavirus was not the only factor.

“While we knew that there would be fewer refugees resettled this year than perhaps in years past, it’s surprising how few were resettled.”

Preliminary government figures reviewed by The Hill show the Biden administration was striving to ramp up processing in September, but experts say even if the White House narrowly edges out its predecessor, it has still fallen short of the expectations it set at the outset of Biden’s presidency.

“Even if the administration manages to resettle more in this fiscal year than the last year of the Trump administration, it’s still only a fraction of the overall goal and only marginally higher than the lowest point on record,” said Jorge Loweree, policy director with the American Immigration Council.

The low figures for a program brought into its modern form in 1980 to boost the number of refugees resettled in the U.S. take on new urgency as resettlement agencies have been told to prepare for as many 95,000 Afghan refugees following the U.S. evacuation.

Biden’s path to increasing the refugee cap has been a convoluted one.

In February, he said he would raise the cap to 62,500 for this fiscal year — part of a pledge to reach 125,000 within his first year in office.

But he slow-walked the presidential determination that officially set the new number for the program, leaving in limbo refugees with a number of security and health checks that risked expiring shortly after their March flights.

“Because he took until April, all those…