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FILE – President Donald Trump throws pens used to sign executive orders to the crowd during an indoor Presidential Inauguration parade event in Washington, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025 (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File).
A coalition of faith organizations, refugees and U.S. citizens whose family members are refugees is suing the Trump administration for abruptly “dismantling” the country’s refugee resettlement system.
Under the terms of Executive Order 14163, President Donald Trump aims to suspend the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) for 90-day intervals “until such time as the further entry into the United States of refugees aligns with the interests of the United States.”
The plaintiffs, in their 46-page lawsuit filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, say the 47th president’s executive order counsels — and premature agency action has already resulted in — a stark violation of federal law.
And, they note, this is nothing new.
“This is not the first time President Trump has attacked refugees and the system that facilitates their resettlement in the United States,” the lawsuit reads. “This Court, as well as courts around the country, uniformly rejected those prior attempts. Rather than learn from past mistakes, the Trump Administration has repeated them and engaged in severely harmful and irrational conduct that flouts the rule of law.”
Led by a Congolese refugee identified only as the pseudonym Pacito, the lawsuit seeks a temporary restraining order, a preliminary injunction, and a permanent injunction over both the executive order itself and associated moves by various agencies in service of implementing the order.
The major problem with the ban on refugee resettlement is that it violates the 1980 Refugee Act — which is part of the broader Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), according to the lawsuit. This federal law “sets out detailed policies and procedures” that make up the USRAP. And, the plaintiffs say, some portions of this law are “statutorily mandated.”
The refugee resettlement process, or USRAP, is complicated, contains multiple steps, and often requires input from — and substantial work performed by — both public and private entities.
The lawsuit recounts the USRAP process at length and describes it as “Congress’s carefully crafted system” and “a comprehensive statutory scheme” in service of the argument that Trump and his agencies cannot simply pick and choose which laws to abide by.
One aspect of the USRAP relevant to many plaintiffs is the statutory provision known as “follow to join” or “following to join” (FTJ) and which allows refugees already in the country to petition for their spouses and minor children to join them — subject to two conditions.
“Beneficiaries of an FTJ petition are admitted as refugees, and their admission is counted under the number of refugees authorized to enter the United States pursuant to that fiscal year’s presidential determination,” the lawsuit reads. “Under the Refugee Act, so long as an FTJ beneficiary is not inadmissible under the INA, the government has no discretion to deny their entry as refugees.”
The plaintiffs, for their part, say those two conditions end the government’s inquiry. So long as the annual number of refugees has not been met, and the family members are not otherwise statutorily prohibited from entering, the FTJ process should move forward.
“Under the Refugee Act, FTJ benefits are nondiscretionary and there is no authority for the executive to indefinitely suspend a nondiscretionary statutory duty,” the lawsuit goes on. “Defendants’ suspension of the USRAP violates the Refugee Act.”
The general contours of the USRAP suspension are familiar, the plaintiffs note, because they are similar to the previous Trump administration’s temporary ban on the admission of refugees from Muslim-majority countries. The present ban, however, goes further by applying to all refugees and is positioned to be “indefinite.”
But prospective suspension of law by fiat is not the only problem with what the administration has done, the lawsuit claims.
Trump’s underlings, the plaintiffs say, aggressively jumped the gun.
From the filing, at length:
The chaos intensified when the implementing agencies arbitrarily and without explanation failed to follow even the paltry restraints in the Order: Rather than wait until January 27 to implement the suspension as the Order directed, the agencies immediately canceled scheduled travel for refugees. Plaintiff Pacito, for example, was scheduled to travel on January 22 with his wife and baby and had sold all of the family’s possessions and given up their rental house in preparation; he then learned that their travel was canceled.
There are many such instances of similarly-situated refugees and family members who have been negatively impacted by the executive order, particularly the pause on the FTJ program, the lawsuit claims.
To that end, the plaintiffs are also suing the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Health and Human Services for how they have implemented the ban so far. These claims are premised on violations of the Administrative Procedure Act — which often blocks government action deemed “arbitrary and capricious.”
Finally, the plaintiffs’ third major complaint has to do with money — and the much-litigated spending freeze aimed at foreign aid organizations. These claims are raised by three Jewish, ecumenical Christian, and Lutheran refugee resettlement organizations.
First of all, the lawsuit says, the foreign aid pause “has nothing to do with refugee resettlement” and does not mention refugees or refugee support benefits whatsoever.
“The State Department has provided no explanation as to why USRAP processing and support for refugees and Afghan and Iraqi allies in the United States constitute ‘foreign development assistance,”” the filing reads.
Second, the plaintiffs say, the spending freeze is unlawfully backdated by several months.
“Since receiving the Suspension Notices, the Plaintiff Resettlement Agencies have not received reimbursements for millions of dollars they are owed from the State Department for work performed in November and December 2024, well before the Suspension Notices and the Foreign Aid Executive Order issued,” the lawsuit goes on. “All of these actions — the suspension of refugee admissions and processing and the refugee funding suspension — have not just harmed refugees waiting to come to the United States. They have also devastated refugees already here and the organizations that seek to help them.”
The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Jamal N. Whitehead, a Joe Biden appointee.
