Republicans who have championed the cause of refugees in the past, including Sen. James Lankford and former Sen. Marco Rubio, who is now secretary of state, have done little to draw attention to the case. But Hetfield also expressed frustration that Democrats who have rallied against the Trump administration’s wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador have paid less attention to the plight of refugees.
“It’s amazing how individuals who have been wrongfully removed from this country have been getting a lot of attention, but here we’re talking about 128,000 people, all of whom have faced life-threatening situations and been put in a position of being rescued and resettled by the United States government, and then had that offer taken away from them,” Hetfield said.
Last week at a hearing of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, brought up the freezing of the program while noting the administration’s recent decision to admit 59 Afrikaners from South Africa, asking Rubio, “Do you think Afrikaner farmers are the most persecuted group in the world?”
Rubio responded by insisting Afrikaners face persecution in South Africa and argued the refugee program suffers from a “volume problem” of not being able to admit all persecuted people. He also said the program would “prioritize people coming into the country on the basis of the interests of this country.”
White South Africans demonstrate in support of U.S. President Donald Trump in front of the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, Feb. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)
The response was an about-face for Rubio, who was one of 18 senators from both parties who sent a letter in 2019 to officials in Trump’s first administration speaking out against rumored plans to zero out refugee admissions.
“At a time when we are facing the ‘highest levels of displacement on record,’ according to the United Nations Refugee Agency, we urge you to increase the refugee resettlement cap and to admit as many refugees as possible within that cap,” read the letter, which was spearheaded by Lankford and Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, and signed by Sen. John Thune, a South Dakota Republican who is now Senate majority leader.
None of the Republican senators responded to requests for comment on the refugee program’s status. Coons’ office responded in a statement, noting Americans’ “marrow deep” support for accepting refugees and saying that freezing the program “does nothing to make us safer or reduce costs; it’s cruelty for cruelty’s sake, and Senator Coons will continue doing all he can to end it.”
RELATED: Trump Administration Must Produce Status Report on Refugee Resettlement, Judge Orders
Several groups filed amicus briefs in support of the plaintiffs this week, including attorneys general from 20 states as well as faith groups such as Lutheran Services Carolinas, Jesuit Refugee Service, JustFaith Ministries, the Council on American-Islamic Relations California and Bet Tzedek Legal Services.
“Despite their differences, the faiths to which amici, their staffs, and their volunteers adhere place service to the stranger — refugees, immigrants, neighbors — at the core of their practices and systems of belief,” read part of a brief filed by a group of religious organizations, which outlined a variety of theological arguments from different faith traditions in support of refugees.
But as the legal battle drags on, Akay Alp said, refugees who cannot enter the country continue to languish. One of the individual plaintiffs in the case, identified as Pacito, who fled Congo when he was 13 years old, refused to believe his flight to the U.S. had been canceled two days before he was supposed to leave, according to the lawyer. Instead, he slept outside the travel booking facility with his wife and infant child, hoping there had been a mistake.
“He literally did not believe, could not believe, that it could be true,” said Akay Alp.
This article originally appeared here.
