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President Trump’s paused travel ban still results in plummeting Texas refugee resettlement numbers

Pu Ying Huang
/
KUT

The number of refugee families that the State of Texas has helped resettle has dropped drastically this year,reports KUT.

Part of the reason: Despite the fact that President Trump’s travel ban has been repeatedly struck down by Federal courts, the effort has still wreaked havoc on refugee resettlement in Texas.

Aaron Rippenkroeger, president and CEO of Refugee Services of Texas, explains that the Texas resettlement system has a lot of moving parts.

“When you […] attempt to make sudden adjustments to it, it can have a residual effect for years,” he adds.

The Trump administration has also cut the number of refugees allowed to resettle in the U.S. in half. But the drop in Texas has often been even larger. For example, last October Texas resettled 1,000 refugees. In April, the state only welcomed around 350.