A trio of federal judges in California declared on Tuesday that President Donald Trump must welcome roughly 40,000 refugees approved by President Joe Biden’s deputies.
“We welcome this continued relief for tens of thousands of refugees who will now have the opportunity to restart their lives in the United States,” said Melissa Keaney, the progressive lawyer for the elite-funded, anti-borders International Refugee Assistance Project.
In a second courtroom in Seattle, another federal judge ordered the Trump administration to keep paying the quasi-government agencies that settle the refugees in Americans’ crowded housing, schools, and workplaces, such as in Springfield, Ohio.
The judges’ policy preferences are likely to be appealed by Trump’s deputies. The decisions contradict his legal claim that presidents have full authority over who gets to cross the U.S. borders. The judges’ views also contradict Trump’s election mandate to reduce the civic burden of migration.
But the progressives’ lawsuits are good news for their allies among the nation’s meatpacking companies. Many of the companies rely on the progressives to supply them with cheap, subsidized, and healthy workers to replace prior refugees worn by tough working conditions in the plants, where chains on the disassemply lines often deliver 300 carcasses per hour.
Without the progressive-delivered refugees, the companies would be forced to buy more high-tech robots and hire better-paid Americans to operate the robots.
Biden’s deputies imported 197,000 refugees by October 2024 and hoped to import more than 125,000 during the next 12 months via a fast-track process at a cost of more than $2.5 billion.
There may be many refugees approved by Biden but still outside the country. “As of September … more than 40,400 had been approved for U.S. refugee status,” the Migration Policy Institute reported in October 2024.
Trump suspended the refugee programs on January 20, saying in Executive Order 14163:
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. 1101 et seq., and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, it is hereby ordered:
Section 1. Purpose. Over the last 4 years, the United States has been inundated with record levels of migration, including through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP). Cities and small towns alike, from Charleroi, Pennsylvania, and Springfield, Ohio, to Whitewater, Wisconsin, have seen significant influxes of migrants. Even major urban centers such as New York City, Chicago, and Denver have sought Federal aid to manage the burden of new arrivals. Some jurisdictions, like New York and Massachusetts, have even recently declared states of emergency because of increased migration.
The United States lacks the ability to absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees, into its communities in a manner that does not compromise the availability of resources for Americans, that protects their safety and security, and that ensures the appropriate assimilation of refugees. This order suspends the USRAP until such time as the further entry into the United States of refugees aligns with the interests of the United States.
“I therefore direct that entry into the United States of refugees under the USRAP be suspended,” the President ordered.
The three California judges acknowledged that Trump has the authority to decide how many refugees to accept during his term, but they also argued that Trump’s Executive Order did not actually stop the inflow of the migrants approved by Biden’s deputies:
Executive Order No. 14163 does not purport to revoke the refugee status of individuals who received that status under the United States Refugee Admissions Program prior to January 20, 2025.
The Seattle judge declared that Trump did not properly explain his cut-off of funding to the refugee agencies that deliver the refugees into the empty slots besides that chains that pull animal carcasses through the slaughhouses:
The Government’s sudden termination of decades-old agreements without reasoned explanation likely constitutes arbitrary and capricious action that must be set aside. Without immediate relief, refugees remain stranded abroad, families separated, and resettlement agencies shuttered.
The Government contends these terminations are mere contract disputes beyond this Court’s jurisdiction, but this argument fundamentally misapprehends the nature of Plaintiffs’ claims. Rather than seeking contractual remedies, Plaintiffs ask this Court to enforce statutory obligations through its inherent equitable powers—authority that Congress specifically reinforces in the Administrative Procedure Act by empowering courts to “issue all necessary and appropriate process” to prevent irreparable injury.
Breitbart News described the civic damage deliberately caused by Biden’s deputies to many American towns, such as Whitewater in Pennsylvania, as well as Springfield and Lockland in Ohio.
The government-funded contractors celebrated the Seattle judge’s directive to restore their funding.
RELATED: Seattle Police Arrest Leftist Protesters Demanding Housing for Migrants, Refugees
“Yesterday, the court once again declared President Trump’s suspension of the U.S. Refugee Admissions program illegal, and yet the U.S. government has made negligible progress to restore refugee resettlement,” said Mark Hetfield, president of the HIAS refugee-delivery group.
In September, the Wall Street Journal described housing conditions for Haitians at a meatpacking plant in Greeley, Colorado:
A [company] human-resources supervisor arranged for some of the immigrant workers to stay at the Rainbow Motel, a mile down the road from the plant, where they lived for weeks. They slept on the floor, as many as eight to a room, and cooked meals on hot plates on the carpet. [The company] footed the bill.
The supervisor, himself an immigrant from the African nation of Benin, set up others to stay in a five-bedroom, two-bathroom unit he had leased in a house in town. There, too, they slept on floors. At one point, 30 or more people were living there, workers said. When the power went out in the winter, they cooked in their coats. They were charged $60 a week in rent.
“Workers worried that if they complained, they would lose their jobs,” the report added.
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