One important element of the Biden executive order on refugee resettlement is the section on vetting, and the fact that there will now be a White House official charged with coordinating vetting agencies whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/… A major barrier to refugee entry during the Trump era was the vetting layers his administration added. These hit refugees vastly differently based on their origin/religion (see my 2018 story here, many other journalists/observers reported similar trends) reuters.com/article/us-usa…

Amazing work by my colleagues, continuing to dig into the chaos of federal contracts awarded in the age of COVID-19 @ryangabrielson @lydiadepillis @davidmcswane @derekwillis @ConnorASheets propublica.org/article/a-clos… Here are some other pieces we've done on the same theme. Me and @derekwillis from Friday: propublica.org/article/the-fe…

Newest data from @StateDept shows pace of waiver issuances for people subject to travel ban appears to be picking up. As of Oct. 31, 23% of visa applicants subject to the ban had been granted waivers. That's up from 17% a month earlier travel.state.gov/content/dam/vi… Those figures mask huge disparities by nationality. For instance, the October figures show that just 8.7% of visa applications by Iranians (by far the largest group) were granted waivers. Libyans were 36%, Somalis 26%, Yemenis (2nd largest group) 57%

The @StateOIG report released today offers new details on the 2017 removal of Lawrence Bartlett, the @StateDept's refugee admissions director, from his position (he has since returned to that role) stateoig.gov/system/files/e… .@ArshadReuters and I wrote about his removal in early 2018. By then, he had been assigned to the FOIA office, which an official described as a form of internal exile akin to being sent "to Siberia." reuters.com/article/us-usa…

There's a word officials at @USAID used when one of their colleagues was ousted because of pressure from @VP's office.

She had been "Penced."

I spoke to 40 current/former officials and experts and saw internal emails. Here's what it means to be "Penced." (THREAD) 2/ For yrs, conservative Christian groups have wanted to direct more foreign aid in the Middle East toward Christians. They found a receptive ear in this administration, particularly @VP, whose office pushed USAID/State Dept to do more for Christians and other minorities in Iraq

NEW: @USCIS, the federal agency charged with admitting immigrants, has instructed its officers to use Google Translate and other similar tools to understand refugees' social media posts propublica.org/article/google… Google Translate and other such machine translation tools routinely struggle to translate idioms, colloquial language and slang. Google has even advised that its tool is not "intended to replace human translators."

“Both the British and Australian governments have been trying to keep the identities of their arrested citizens (in Iran) out of the public domain, believing diplomatic efforts to have them released would be more effective if conducted in private.” gu.com/p/cb6p2/stw This strategy - keeping things quiet in hopes of brokering a diplomatic deal - is a common response to Iran's practice of arresting academics, journalists, tourists and others with foreign and dual nationalities.

Trump prides himself on freeing American prisoners held abroad. So why isn’t he pushing harder for the ones in Iran? @kgilsinan and @yarabayoumy report: theatlantic.com/politics/archi… @kgilsinan @yarabayoumy "[T]he fact that when you engage with Iranian officials they always tell you not to make noise, and that if you don’t make noise, things will be resolved more quickly, that’s probably an indication that you should do precisely the opposite.” - @Joelcpj theatlantic.com/politics/archi…

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 @StateDept has released new statistics on the implementation of the travel ban between Dec. 2017 and March 2019. There's a lot in here, but some highlights travel.state.gov/content/dam/vi… More than 12,000 visa applicants from the travel ban countries are in the security check backlog (often referred to as "administrative processing"). @StateDept says: "At present, much of the enhanced screening and vetting process is manual."

This statement by an Iranian diplomat runs counter to findings of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. It found in Sept. 2017 that the jailing of Iranian-Americans Siamak and Baquer Namazi is "arbitrary" and contravenes Declaration on Human Rights ohchr.org/Documents/Issu…

https://twitter.com/baeidinejad/status/1129400774289764352

Just one excerpt of the UN report - Siamak's access to legal counsel was severely limited, and he, his family and lawyers were given no formal evidence behind the charges of espionage/collusion during his pre-trial detention

Given @jzarif’s recent statements about welcoming prisoner negotiations w the US, read me and @joel_schectman from last year on how complicated and fraught this issue actually is reuters.com/investigates/s… For instance, even while tense prisoner talks were happening between the U.S. and Iran in 2015, Iran jailed another American citizen, Siamak Namazi. @jzarif then told John Kerry that Siamak could not be included in the deal

The House Foreign Affairs Committee will hear today from the family members of four American citizens or permanent residents missing or detained in Iran: Bob Levinson, Siamak and Baquer Namazi, and Nizar Zakka foreignaffairs.house.gov/2019/3/the-sta… In addition to those men, we know of several other cases of Americans detained in Iran: Xiyue Wang, a Princeton doctoral student; Morad Tahbaz, a businessman/environmental activist; and Michael White, a Navy veteran. The last two were imprisoned since Trump came into office

Unclear, confusing exchange just now between Jackson Lee and Nielsen regarding children held in HHS custody versus those in DHS custody. Imprecise questions and answers mixing up family separation by CBP, ICE deportation of sponsors. End result is zero actually useful information A clearer, more focused question addressing DHS' responsibility for larger numbers of migrant children in fed custody might ask precisely about ICE's deportation of sponsors and how that works; or deep probing of why some children are still being separated from parents at border

The obvious reaction to this - ironic that the US would ask other countries to give refuge to Venezuelans when its own refugee policy has been so restrictive - is yet another example of how the Trump admin’s immigration policies conflict w its stated foreign policy priorities

https://twitter.com/AmbJohnBolton/status/1097205853831290880

Exhibit 2: the travel ban, in particular on Iranians, given the Trump admin’s stated support for the Iranian people. When Iranian activist @AlinejadMasih met w @SecPompeo recently, one of her three points was the travel ban’s impact on ordinary people

https://twitter.com/alinejadmasih/status/1092589933326422016?s=21

This is surreal for me to even type, but I'm on @ThisAmerLife this weekend for a segment produced by the amazing @zchace about the tiny library on the U.S.-Canada border where Iranian families separated by the travel ban have been reuniting thisamericanlife.org/664/the-room-o… The original story I did for @Reuters on the library last month is here: reuters.com/article/us-usa…

Trump, during his Christmas Day video conference with U.S. troops: “We have a little bit of a shutdown because we believe in walls." Reported by the indefatigable @makinibrice

A brief thread - I've been perusing the FY 2019 US refugee admissions data available on wrapsnet.org. Nearly 87 percent of the ~5300 refugees admitted to United States since Oct. 1 came from four countries: Burma, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, and Ukraine 1/5 At the current pace (BIG caveat because admissions early in the fiscal year are often slow and then ramp up towards end of year), the U.S. will admit about 24,000 refugees, more than it admitted in 2018 but less than the 30k cap set by the Trump administration this year 2/5

Read my story with @joel_schectman from August about how a series of U.S. presidents, Republican and Democrat, have tried and failed to end Iran's practice of taking Americans prisoner reuters.com/investigates/s…

https://twitter.com/SecPompeo/status/1072143018499719168

As we wrote, the Trump administration faces the troubling reality that there is no easy way to stop Iran from taking Americans prisoner, a tactic the Islamic Republic has used since 1979.

Today @Reuters published my story on a tiny library straddling the U.S.-Canada border, which has become the unlikely site of bittersweet reunions for families separated by Trump's travel ban reuters.com/article/us-usa… 1/11 The Haskell Free Library and Opera House sits in both Quebec and Vermont, so it's in a sort of geopolitical gray zone, accessible to people entering from both the U.S. and Canada 2/11

Judge Mark Goldsmith, in his preliminary injunction ordering release of Iraqi nationals detained >6 mos by Trump admin pending their deportation (Hamama v. Adducci): "The Government has acted ignobly in this case, by failing to comply with court orders... ... submitting demonstrably false declarations of Government officials, and otherwise violating its litigation obligations - all of which impels this Court to impose sanctions."