In a small Wisconsin church, Trump's threat of refugee crackdown looms

Ted Hesson - Reuters - 29/10
On a fall Sunday in the U.S. election battleground state of Wisconsin, Masomo Rugama and fellow Congolese community members danced and sang to worship songs in their native Kinyamulenge. The women donned colorful dresses, the men mostly suits. Small children in their Sunday best ran up and down the aisles. They prayed for a good outcome in the presidential election.
  • Congolese in Wisconsin worry about relatives' future
  • Trump likely to target refugee resettlement program again
  • Congolese are largest nationality of refugees resettled in fiscal year 2024
APPLETON, Wisconsin, Oct 29 (Reuters) - On a fall Sunday in the U.S. election battleground state of Wisconsin, Masomo Rugama and fellow Congolese community members danced and sang to worship songs in their native Kinyamulenge. The women donned colorful dresses, the men mostly suits. Small children in their Sunday best ran up and down the aisles. They prayed for a good outcome in the presidential election.
This Congolese church is one of several in the city of Appleton that have sprung up to serve a growing number of refugees who have settled there after fleeing the war-torn African nation.
Rugama, 31, came to the United States in 2016 after six years in a refugee camp in Uganda. It was just months before Donald Trump would win the presidency and decimate the refugee resettlement program that had legally brought him there.
Rugama, who became a U.S. citizen in 2022, is new to American politics but is keenly aware that Trump has repeatedly painted Congolese immigrants as formerly imprisoned criminals - despite any evidence of widespread criminality among them - and is expected to again greatly reduce entries of refugees from abroad.
Rugama gives Trump the benefit of the doubt. “I think, maybe, he has never met a Congolese,” he said.
Rugama’s brother and sister, his nieces and nephews as well as his mother-in-law are still waiting in Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya hoping to complete the long vetting process for resettlement. They are watching the U.S. presidential election campaign that sees Trump up against Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris from afar, he said, wondering what the outcome could mean for their hopes to resettle there.
While the refugee resettlement program has enjoyed strong bipartisan support in the past, Trump has portrayed it as a security vulnerability. The difference between the two candidates on the issue could not be more stark.
Trump is expected to temporarily suspend the U.S. refugee admissions program and then slash refugee entries if reelected, mirroring what he did during his 2017-2021 presidency.
Trump’s first-term efforts to clamp down on refugees, reducing the admissions cap to a record low 15,000, was part of a broader effort to...
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