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I'm late to this letter from former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to John Bolton, obtained by @tedhesson. He argued in Sept. 2018 for the refugee cap to be 45,000 (Trump later cut it to 30k) politico.com/f/?id=0000016c…
Mattis argues that 1) the U.S. owes it to Iraqis who risked their lives in battle to admit them as refugees and 2) more immigrant families enlist than native-born, "so there is also a positive second-order effect" of higher refugee admissions
The letter, sent in Sept. 2018, bolsters my @Reuters story from last year, published in Aug. 2018, on Pentagon officials raising the alarm internally about paltry admissions of Iraqi refugees who had helped the U.S. in battle reuters.com/article/us-usa…
That story, and my subsequent piece for @Reuters, found that FBI background checks were blocking Iraqis, Somalis, and refugees from 9 other countries mostly in the Middle East and Africa from coming to the U.S. reuters.com/article/us-usa…
And read @tedhesson's scoop on the discussions now ongoing within the Trump administration to possibly slash refugee admissions to zero politico.com/story/2019/07/…
