WASHINGTON — Three weeks after taking office, Joe Biden announced that he would quadruple the number of refugees allowed into the US.
For HIAS, it seemed like an answered prayer.
Activists during a pro-refugee demonstration organized by HIAS outside the US Capitol in 2017. (Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty)
HIAS was excited for Biden, who spoke of America’s duty to be a compassionate and welcoming country. Biden’s promise on Feb. 12 to let in 62,500 refugees in 2021 seemed to be a fulfillment of that rhetoric. Trump had set the cap for fiscal year 2021 at 15,000.
Then nothing happened.
Two months went by in which Biden did not raise the limit on refugees above 15,000. The administration was swamped with an overwhelming number of entrants, and meanwhile more than 700 refugees who had received plane tickets based on Biden’s February promise had to cancel their flights, according to HIAS.
On April 16, Biden made it official: He would not raise the cap on refugees above the limit set by Trump, though he would let in refugees from a wider range of countries in Africa and the Middle East.
Later in the day, following pushback from activists, the White House said it would raise the cap in a month, by May 15.
Under the Trump administration HIAS entered a new era in its history. Founded in 1881 as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the agency was a resource and aid to waves of newly arrived Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe.
Later it worked to resettle Holocaust survivors and Soviet Jewish refugees.
After the Soviet Union’s collapse, HIAS shortened its name to the acronym, removing its identity as a Jewish organization, and pivoted to resettling non-Jewish refugees and mobilizing the American Jewish community around advocating for immigrants and refugees.
Days after taking office, Trump announced that he was banning all refugee entry, and while refugees never stopped coming, the numbers plummeted to a fraction of what they once were. HIAS resettled 3,844 refugees in Fiscal Year 2016, but 1,171 two years later with Trump in office.
Trump’s actions on immigration spurred a flood of donations to HIAS. The agency more than doubled its annual budget to $90 million.
With its windfall, HIAS unsuccessfully sued the Trump administration over its travel ban, increased its advocacy work and shifted its weight outside the US.
The organization opened offices in Mexico to help people who were camped on the other side of the border.
Overall, it opened offices in five new countries, sending its total to 16 foreign offices.
Rather than helping potential refugees reach the US, HIAS assists them in accessing resources and obtaining rights and legal status in their home nations.
The agency has also increased its fundraising work in Europe.
“We decided we needed to do the work where the refugees are and where they need us,” said Melanie Nezer, vice-president for public affairs at HIAS.
“Resettlement is such a wonderful, humanitarian positive solution for people, but it’s only a solution for a small number of refugees.”
In Ecuador, where HIAS has 420 employees and 17 offices, the group focuses on refugees fleeing conflicts in Colombia and Venezuela.
Asked whether the 2020 election changed anything, Sabrina Lustgarten, who has managed the agency’s work in Ecuador, said “We haven’t seen any change with Trump and with Biden.”
Until the Trump administration, according to the Pew Research Center, the US consistently let in more refugees than the rest of the world combined, no matter who was president.
“We were such an apple pie issue,” HIAS CEO Mark Hetfield said.
HIAS was only one piece of Jewish activism on behalf of immigrants in the Trump era. Another group, Never Again Action, was founded in 2019 and quickly received national attention for demonstrating in front of ICE detention centers, blocking the entrances and being arrested.
Stephen Lurie, one of the group’s organizers, said the group hopes to stress that even if, from its perspective, the Biden administration is saying the right things about immigrants, it can be pushed to do more.
“One of the challenges that we’re facing, or anyone that’s doing advocacy on this front faces, is that people may believe that the administration is doing the best it can already, and that is demobilizing,” Lurie said.
“There actually is still a big gap between what they can do and what they are doing.”
Biden’s decision to delay raising the limit means that, just like in past years, Hetfield is looking to the future, hoping for better news.
“We don’t know if they’re clarifying or backpedaling or what,” he said following the White House’s second announcement. “They should just raise the damn ceiling and figure out how many refugees they can bring in under that ceiling, and what’s the plan for doing it.”
