Trump Admin to Re-Vet Refugees Biden Resettled in U.S.

President Donald Trump’s United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will begin re-examining refugees resettled in American communities by the Biden administration, a new report details.

An internal USCIS memo, obtained by CBS News, details the administration’s plan to reexamine the hundreds of thousands of refugees the Biden administration brought to the United States over a four-year period.

CBS News reports:

The memo, dated Nov. 21 and signed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Joseph Edlow is directing agency officials to investigate cases of refugees who entered the United States over a four-year period, between January 20, 2021 and February 20, 2025. [Emphasis added]

Edlow asked USCIS officials to review the cases of all refugees admitted during this period and possibly re-interview them. These investigations and reinterviews, Edlow wrote, would seek to determine whether these individuals met the definition of refugee when they entered the United States and whether there are legal barriers that would prevent them from becoming permanent residents of the United States. [Emphasis added]

As a result of this new audit, USCIS officials are suspending pending green card applications from refugees resettled under President Joe Biden.

The Trump administration has significantly scaled back the refugee resettlement program to more manageable levels. For fiscal year 2026, the ceiling on the number of refugees has been set at 7,500. This is not a ceiling to be respected but rather a numerical limit that the administration will not exceed.

This is a 94 percent reduction in the refugee cap compared to Biden’s last year in office, when he set the cap at 125,000 refugees.