As a trauma counselor, I have spent years sitting in the homes of refugee families, on worn couches, at kitchen tables, and sometimes on the floor with children who are still afraid of loud sounds. I have listened to stories of war, torture, separation, and loss that stay with you long after you leave the room. Stories people would rather forget, yet were forced to retell during the long and exhausting process of coming lawfully to the United States.
So when I heard that the Trump administration, as of last month, has begun to reinterview refugees who have already been fully vetted and resettled here—in some cases forcibly detaining entire families and transporting them out of state to do so—my heart sank.
It sank first in mid-November when the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services announced its intent to reinterview refugees who arrived under the Biden administration. And then, just days later, I was heartbroken further by a horrifying attack on two members of the National Guard in Washington, D.C.—and then even further dejected to learn that the alleged perpetrator was an Afghan national who reportedly entered the United States in 2021.
Violence of any kind is unacceptable, and no matter the state of one’s mental health, none of us has the right to take the life of another. But rather than addressing this incident for what it seems to be based on reports to date—an isolated incident perpetrated by one—the sins of one are being meted out on a whole community, just because they happen to look like him.
And retribution has been swift: By Thanksgiving, a day after the D.C. attack, the Trump administration announced a halt to all immigration processes for all Afghans, a pause on affirmative asylum claims for those of any nationality, reexamination of green cards for lawful permanent residents from Afghanistan and 18 other countries (with more added since), and a pledge to “permanently pause migration from all Third World countries.” Roughly 84 percent of the world’s people are apparently officially unwelcome in our country because of the heinous actions of one.
Fear is a strong master. Even to the previously skeptical—and even though the alleged perpetrator was not admitted as a refugee but rather through a distinct process for Afghan allies after the fall of Kabul—the plan to reinterrogate the roughly 230,000 refugees resettled during the Biden administration, suddenly seemed more reasonable to many Americans.
To be clear, the evangelical humanitarian organization where I work, World Relief, like many other refugee agencies, veterans group, and national security experts, has long called for bipartisan legislation that would subject Afghans who arrived in the immediate aftermath of the evacuation of Kabul to additional security vetting—equivalent to the gold standard screening already required of refugees—as a part of an application for permanent legal status.
But the refugees subject to the Trump administration’s new interviews, already underwent this screening, which is incredibly thorough and selective: Less than two-thirds of 1 percent of the world’s 37 million refugees were resettled to the U.S. during the entire four years of the Biden administration. And refugees already undergo additional security screening one year after arrival, when they are required to apply for their green cards.
It’s appropriate that these background checks reverify that individuals do not pose any sort of security or public safety threat. What’s not right—without specific indication of error in an individual case—is to readjudicate refugee determinations for hundreds of thousands of lawfully admitted individuals, relitigating the question of whether an individual meets the legal definition of a refugee, forcing them to reprove (at risk of deportation) the well-foundedness of their fear of persecution for reasons such as their religion, race, or political opinion.
In the current context, it is reasonable to be afraid of this threat of reconsideration. Since Trump took office a year ago, the Department of Homeland Security has sought to terminate the legal status of more than 1.5 million other lawfully present immigrants and declared Afghanistan, South Sudan, Burma, Venezuela, and Syria to be sufficiently safe countries to deport individuals lawfully residing in the United States. The adjudications of asylum cases—where still moving forward—are increasingly arbitrary: One judge recently approved asylum for an Iranian who fled persecution after converting from Islam to Christianity; her husband faced a different judge and was denied asylum and faces the threat of deportation.
Even presuming that most already resettled refugees ultimately “pass” their reinterviews, most Americans do not understand what this process will cost those going through it. For many refugees, the original interview was one of the hardest days of their lives. They had to reopen their past, describe in painful detail the persecution that they experienced, and trust that someone would finally believe them. Those who have gone through it never forget the emotional toll of that experience.
Then, after years of waiting, they finally arrived in a place where they could exhale, a place where their children could sleep without fear and where rebuilding a life felt possible again. And now they are being told that the safety they found might not be real, that the ground beneath them may shift again, and that they may have to reopen the very trauma they have spent years trying to heal from to prove it all over again.
As a trauma counselor, I can already see the signs of the pain this will cause these families: a father pacing again through the night, a mother whose hands begin to tremble when the mail arrives. Children overhearing whispers and suddenly fearing that everything they have gained—their school, their friends, their sense of home—could disappear. Trauma does not need much to wake up. Sometimes all it takes is a letter or a tweet.
The consequences will not remain confined to interview rooms. Teachers, counselors, physicians, churches, and community organizations will see the ripple effects as children begin to regress, parents lose sleep, and families pause their healing because the future has suddenly become fragile again.
These families have done everything asked of them. They passed the most rigorous vetting process in the world. They rebuilt their lives, worked, paid taxes, volunteered, bought homes, and raised children. Many are now part of the backbone of our communities. Asking them to retell their trauma again, with the fear of losing everything, is not something to do lightly.
America has long claimed to be a place of refuge, and I still believe it can be. But policies that create fear in people who have already survived so much do not make us safer. They leave families feeling abandoned and betrayed. We can protect our country without harming those who trusted us with their lives or pushing survivors back into the darkness they fought so hard to escape.
