Media
Event Summary
The Center for Immigration Studies held an Immigration Newsmaker event featuring Andrew Veprek, Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM).
What is the State Department doing on migration — and what comes next?
Moderated by Mark Krikorian, the Center's executive director, the discussion covered key issues shaping U.S. and global migration policy, including:
- The role of the State Department in implementing President Trump’s immigration policies.
- Reorganization of the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration to support the President’s immigration policies.
- U.S. funding of international organizations and NGOs and its effect on migration flows.
- Refugee resettlement under the Trump Administration, including Afrikaners.
- The Afghan Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program.
- Reforming the global refugee and asylum system.
Date and Location
April 23, 2026
Washington, DC
MARK KRIKORIAN: Good afternoon. My name is Mark Krikorian. I’m executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank here in Washington that examines and critiques the impact of immigration on the United States. This is one of our series of newsmaker interviews.
And we are honored to have with us Andrew Veprek, who is the assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. And he’ll tell us more about it, but that’s one of the two parts of the State Department that is most centrally involved in immigration policy, the other one being the Consular Bureau, which people may not know the name of it but it’s the one that does the visas and abroad, and so, obviously, central to immigration issues. PRM, as it’s known in shorthand, also has a major role to play. And I am delighted to have Andrew with us to tell us about it.
So, first of all, if you could just tell us what it is that PRM does. Why is this important for immigration policy? And also, how has the bureau and its work changed over the years and specifically under this administration?
ANDREW VEPREK: Well, Mark, first, thanks for having me. Appreciate the opportunity to come and talk about what we do.
If I might take a little step back away from my bureau to the State Department more generally, I think you mentioned that the State Department has an important role in immigration policy. I think a lot of people don’t realize that and don’t think about it. But it’s a whole-of-government effort related to immigration policy, and the State Department is most assuredly involved in it.
I’ll mention that particularly under Secretary Rubio the importance of immigration policy and advancing the president’s immigration agenda has been elevated. In the National Security Strategy, obviously, we’re very concerned about national sovereignty, control of borders. But in the recently released Agency Strategic Plan for the State Department, the very first strategic objective relates to national sovereignty, control of borders, and making sure that Americans decide who enters the country and on what terms.
MR. KRIKORIAN: And that’s very different from the past. I mean, the State Department always had an important role in immigration, but – and correct me here if I’m wrong; you’re a career Foreign Service officer, so you’ve been in the department a long time – my sense was they always sort of viewed it as a little bit kind of almost maybe not embarrassing is the right word, but something that they didn’t really value. I mean, it was – you know, often, Foreign Service officers, their first tour is consular issues; in other words, doing visas. Not in every case, but a lot of cases. And my sense is a lot of times they viewed it as kind of hazing before they got to their real job, you know.
MR. VEPREK: (Laughs.) Well, I could – I could tell you personally I’m a consular officer by trade, so I think it’s pretty important.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right. Yeah, no, absolutely.
MR. VEPREK: But I’ll say the emphasis on national sovereignty, border security, immigration, you would think that’s something that should be in a National Security Strategy and in the agency strategic goals for a foreign affairs agency. Odd that this was the first time it had to be made explicit, but you know, we make it explicit.
If I can pick up on something else you mentioned about Consular Affairs, I don’t know if you’ll have the opportunity to talk to my colleague Mora Namdar, who leads Consular Affairs, but –
MR. KRIKORIAN: We’re trying. Put in a good word for us.
MR. VEPREK: OK. (Laughs.) Well, of course, they are heavily involved in advancing the president’s immigration agenda. You mentioned the issuance of visas, and in that regard one of the things we have done in this administration is emphasize screening and vetting a lot more than we’ve done in the past. One of the first things we did was make it very clear that consular officers who have the responsibility to adjudicate these cases in the field take the time they need to adjudicate cases.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Instead of kind of pushing them along to meet quotas and stuff.
MR. VEPREK: Right. And so we made it very clear that there are no formal or informal quotas, production targets, anything like that.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Interesting. Before you continue –
MR. VEPREK: Yeah.
MR. KRIKORIAN: I’m terrible at being a moderator. If you have questions, email them to [email protected] – [email protected] – and we will get to as many of them as we can afterwards. Anyway, go ahead.
MR. VEPREK: I’ll mention there have been some procedural changes with regard to visa applications. So now we require visa applicants to apply in their country of nationality or residence.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Oh, really?
MR. VEPREK: This means we can adjudicate their cases in the local context more effectively.
MR. KRIKORIAN: And just so people understand, in other words so that if you’re in Algeria you can’t go to, I don’t know, Italy and apply for a visa there, or –
MR. VEPREK: Unless you’re – unless you’re a resident in Italy for some reason, right?
MR. KRIKORIAN: I see. OK.
MR. VEPREK: You should be applying in Algeria or the place where you’re a resident.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Interesting. OK.
MR. VEPREK: Also, we’ve limited the use of interview waivers, which had drastically expanded. I should mention when I came into the State Department in 2002 – it was right after 9/11 – we didn’t do interview waivers, right? Everybody came in for an interview every time, because it was very important to see somebody in person, talk with him to adjudicate the case, determine his bona fides. Over the last 20 years or so, we had gotten away from that and we had many more people getting visas without actually being interviewed. And so we’ve drastically scaled that back.
I’ll mention also there are a number of things that the president has directed that are being implemented by Bureau of Consular Affairs, such as the travel restrictions and limitations based on nationality under Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
I’ll mention also there’s presently a suspension of processing for immigrant visas for nationals of about 75 countries who historically have used public resources at an elevated rate. And so that’s to give us a little time to look at our procedures for the public charge ineligibility and make sure we’ve got that in order.
MR. KRIKORIAN: So for PRM itself now, obviously, part of the R in PRM is refugees.
MR. VEPREK: Yes.
MR. KRIKORIAN: And it’s both refugee resettlement, but also generally global kind of refugee policy. How has that changed? There are some specific things I want to talk about, but what has the –
MR. VEPREK: Sure, sure.
MR. KRIKORIAN: How has the administration changed its approach to refugees?
MR. VEPREK: I’ll mention – and I worked in PRM once before. In 2018-2019, I was deputy assistant secretary in PRM overseeing refugee admissions and also international migration policy. Compared to then, we have changed the orientation of the bureau completely. I think it’s not too much to say that PRM went from being a humanitarian assistance bureau with a budget of approximately $4 billion a year that was in part focused on bringing people to the United States; now we are focused on implementing the president’s immigration agenda, including returning people from the United States to their home countries. And I’d say there’s sort of three basic functions we do in PRM now.
The first is what I mentioned already, returns or remigration. We have an Office of Remigration that looks after these things. And their work kind of divides up further in a few different ways.
One is getting people back to their home countries when they’ve been ordered removed from the United States.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Oh, OK.
MR. VEPREK: This was a huge problem in the first Trump administration. These are people who have been ordered removed, and their countries – their home countries just won’t facilitate their return – won’t issue travel documents, won’t allow charter flights to go, that sort of thing.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Recalcitrant countries.
MR. VEPREK: Yes, that’s another term –
MR. KRIKORIAN: That’s the term often used.
MR. VEPREK: Exactly, recalcitrant countries.
MR. KRIKORIAN: And that’s something you’ll always hear about ICE dealing with, but of course State is the one that’s dealing with the country itself, right?
MR. VEPREK: Exactly right. Exactly right.
So I’ll say in this administration we have gotten much better cooperation from foreign countries on this. It took a few, I’d say, instances at the beginning of the administration where the secretary and the president had to, frankly, be pretty firm with some other countries who didn’t want to take their people back. They got the message. And –
MR. KRIKORIAN: Kind of make an example of them to encourage the others, as they say.
MR. VEPREK: Right. They got the message, and so other countries have been much more cooperative on that. And that’s a good thing. I mean, hands down, no question about it, countries should just take their people back.
MR. KRIKORIAN: And we, I assume, take our people back, for whatever reason, as well.
MR. VEPREK: Yes. Having served as a consular officer overseas, I can tell you if an American is looking to get home we’re going to issue him a passport to get home. So that’s one thing we’re working on.
Another thing we’re working on is making arrangements for people who have been ordered removed from the United States but for whatever reason can’t go back to their home country, right? And so we look for third countries that are willing to accept their transfer and accommodate them. Now, that’s one office I mentioned, Office of Remigration.
Now, we also have an Office of International Migration and Repatriation that works in the kind of, say, call it international arena on international migration policy. And maybe we can talk a little bit later about some of the things we’re trying to do in the international refugee and asylum system, some reforms we’d like to make there.
And then, finally, refugee processing. This is the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. And so historically this program has been used to bring in many people to the United States from countries all around the world, but often without much kind of, say, political distinction among them. And by that I mean the State Department would kind of tell the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees or some NGO, like, send us people we want to take, and then we would resettle them in the United States. Now, under the Trump administration, we’re being much more, say, deliberate about where we’re accepting refugees from, and this has been the resettlement program from South Africa that’s going on right now.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right. Yeah, if you could tell us a little more about that, because the ceiling for refugees this fiscal year is lower than it was, at 7,500, and most of that has already come in, and they’re almost all Afrikaners or at least people from South Africa. Sort of what’s the rationale there? What’s the thinking? What do you guys have in mind?
MR. VEPREK: Yeah. The president’s described pretty well his concerns about the situation in South Africa and why we want to bring people from South Africa – that is, ethnic minorities from South Africa who’s suffered racial discrimination, why we want to bring them to the United States. I’ll mention also that South Africa is kind of the DEI regime par excellence, and so there is an important kind of signaling function in why we want to bring people from South Africa here.
As for what we’re looking at for the future, I’ll mention the end of the fiscal year is coming up in September. And of course, in the normal order of things there would be a new determination for the next fiscal year. There’s always the possibility –
MR. KRIKORIAN: The ceiling for how many refugees to admit, right. Yeah.
MR. VEPREK: That’s correct. Yeah, the ceiling for refugee admissions. I’ll mention also there’s the possibility for increases in the current ceiling under a certain legal process.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Interesting. OK. So, if we’re talking about resettling refugees, whatever the number ends up being you all have changed how that’s done, because in the past the State Department just contracted out to, essentially, government contractors, many of them religion-based – Catholic Charities, Lutheran Immigrant and Refugee Services, et cetera – to do the resettling, and they kind of made money by the head, that sort of thing. And there was a lot of critiques of it. We’ve done some of it. Others have. Are you changing that? How are you changing it? And going forward, how would that work?
MR. VEPREK: This is an interesting point, and this was something I was responsible for in PRM before. And very candidly, it always struck me as a little odd that the State Department, which is a foreign affairs agency, was kind of functioning like a social services bureaucracy almost and entering into these arrangements with NGOs in the United States, charities that were resettling all these folks.
And so one of the things we did in this administration is re-look that. Like, why is the State Department in this business? And indeed, there was no legal requirement for the State Department to be in the business.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Really?
MR. VEPREK: And beginning 1st of January this year, the Department of Health and Human Services has taken it over.
MR. KRIKORIAN: The Office of Refugee Resettlement –
MR. VEPREK: That’s right.
MR. KRIKORIAN: – within HHS, OK.
MR. VEPREK: That’s right. No, they were always involved. Previously, the State Department handled the first 90 days, the initial resettlement of refugees in the United States, and then you had HHS responsible thereafter. And so we’ve just moved it all over to HHS so it’s fewer seams, and then HHS can work more effectively with the organizations that are doing the resettlement.
MR. KRIKORIAN: So, basically, there’s still contractors they’re using, right, I mean, or is that not correct?
MR. VEPREK: I’m getting a little out of my lane with talking about HHS here.
MR. KRIKORIAN: OK.
MR. VEPREK: I understand they are currently using some of the same people that we used to. But at the same time, I understand they’re looking to the future and thinking about how do they want to do this long run.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Yeah. Go ahead.
MR. VEPREK: And I should mention one other thing on some of these agencies that we were using. It’s not exactly the same cast of characters. When we started the program of resettlement from South Africa, some of these resettlement agencies didn’t want to work with us anymore. They were, I guess, offended by the idea that we were resettling certain people from South Africa, and said they couldn’t do that. And we said, OK.
MR. KRIKORIAN: I don’t want you to speak out of school, so say what you want here on this, but was part of the attraction of resettling the Afrikaners specifically that, to kind of get some of these VOLAGs, we used to call them in the old days, to kind of –
MR. VEPREK: Yeah, resettlement agencies themselves, yeah.
MR. KRIKORIAN: – resettlement agencies to kind of back off?
MR. VEPREK: I think you might have to ask the president that one.
MR. KRIKORIAN: OK. (Laughs.)
MR. VEPREK: But, you know, the president decided where we’re going to resettle people from.
MR. KRIKORIAN: So – and this is – you tell me if this is in your area or not, but one of the things that this administration is also doing is these safe third country or asylum cooperative agreements so that an illegal immigrant crosses the border, wants protection, we at least now have the option – or you explain to me what it is – where they go seek asylum in another country. And so as part of that question is, do they have to have passed through that country that we send them to or do we have agreements with countries and we can send them there whether the person has passed through that country or not?
MR. VEPREK: Exactly right. So we have a provision in the law that provides that if there is another country that has a system of temporary protection that is full and fair, and we have a bilateral arrangement with that country, we can transfer protection seekers – asylum seekers – to that country to pursue their claims there – or, to pursue their claim there, excuse me. It’s not required that they will have – that they have passed through that country. And so we do have a number of arrangements like this now with countries around the world that allow us to transfer asylum seekers from here to those countries to pursue their claims there.
MR. KRIKORIAN: And has that been happening? In other words, have some people actually been sent?
MR. VEPREK: Yes.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Can you tell what some of the countries are, or is that a moving target, or what?
MR. VEPREK: No. So we have, like, live agreements with Uganda, for example, as one, and there are some others around. And we’re always, frankly, looking to do more of these because it’s kind of a global burden dealing with migration and asylum seekers, and so if there are countries that are willing to help share in that burden, want to cooperate with us, then we’re quite happy to talk with them about it.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Just I’ll repeat now if you’re watching this live or if you’re in the audience email your questions to [email protected] and I’ll get to them at the end.
I just wanted to ask, you mentioned Uganda. Israel is the one who pioneered this, sending, you know, asylum seekers specifically to Uganda, as well as to Rwanda. Did you work with them at all or get some advice from them, or was it just completely –
MR. VEPREK: No. I just learned something new right there, obviously. (Laughs.)
MR. KRIKORIAN: Oh, really? OK. Well, OK. Good, good.
One of the things that’s been in the news – and this is probably more a USCIS issue than yours – is this re-vetting of refugees who presumably were vetted but maybe the vetting wasn’t what it was supposed to be. And so could you tell us a little bit about that, even though I think it’s right outside of PRM’s purview?
MR. VEPREK: No, you’re right, that is mostly a USCIS matter. But it points to an important, let’s say, idea that we would like to discuss with some of our international partners in the context of reforming the international refugee and asylum system, and that is: What is refuge, really, right? There’s this kind of practice that has evolved that when somebody becomes a refugee in another country they typically get some type of permanent status there and eventually become, like, naturalized and become a citizen of that country.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right.
MR. VEPREK: But it doesn’t have to be that way. And so we have a number of potential principles for reform of the international asylum and refugee system that we’re talking with other countries about. And so that’s one of them, is whether or not refuge should be a permanent thing or a temporary thing just until the situation in the home country changes.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right.
MR. VEPREK: Some of the other principles we’re exploring are the concept of safe third countries, not exactly in the context we were talking about safe third country agreements, but if you’ve transited a third country where you could have made an asylum claim before, say, arriving in the United States and making an asylum claim, why should we entertain your asylum claim if you could have made an asylum claim in that other place, right?
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right.
MR. VEPREK: Some other sorts of principles for reform. Under the ’51 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which we’re not a party to but we are in the ’67 Protocol which incorporates that, there are categories of refugees – so, you know, people who have suffered persecution on the basis of race, religion, nationality, particular social group or political opinion. That fourth one, particular social group, I understand where it came from, but over time it has become –
MR. KRIKORIAN: Really? Because I don’t know where it came from.
MR. VEPREK: Oh, well, it’s become the – like, say, a lever for all kinds of mischief by talented lawyers arguing to expand the definition of particular social group in a way that distorts it beyond the original intent. And that could – that could use some limiting and reform, I believe.
MR. KRIKORIAN: So is there – to go along this line, one way you could reform, for instance, this particular social group is instead of relying on Justice Department, you know, precedent on what is covered, what is not – you know, does it include people fleeing crime or what have you. I mean, people have gotten asylum for some really pretty wacky particular social groups. As Judge Alito, when he – before he was on the Supreme Court he wrote something to the effect that basically any two people become a particular social group if you come up with a(n) imaginative lawyer. That’s something that could just be expunged from the 1980 Refugee Act statutorily rather than doing anything else. Is there – I mean, are there any thoughts in that regard?
MR. VEPREK: You’re quite right, I think, on the mechanism about we could amend the 1980 Refugee Act, although I would point out that amending any kind of statutes these days is quite difficult.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Yeah. Well, getting post offices named is difficult, yeah.
MR. VEPREK: (Laughs.)
MR. KRIKORIAN: Yeah, that’s a good point.
So, continuing on this line of generally sort of global refugee policy, you mentioned the 1967 Protocol. The 1951 Convention that set out the rules of the five grounds for asylum and all the rest of it we didn’t sign, as I understand it, because of sovereignty concerns. The 1967 Protocol expanded those rules to the whole world and prospectively, and we did sign that, the Senate ratified it because, you know, what could go wrong? I mean, it was only for a handful of Russian ballerinas at the time; it was the Cold War. Is there consideration of just pulling out of that treaty? Because the president can unilaterally pull out of treaties. Has that been discussed, do you know? What’s the story with that?
MR. VEPREK: Right. There’s definitely the ability to do so. I think this is something we would sort of have to weigh carefully, and I wouldn’t want to get ahead of the president and the White House on it.
But you know, we were talking a second ago about the Refugee Act. I think even if we were to withdraw from the ’67 Protocol, then there’s the question about modifying the Refugee Act, so.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right, yeah, because it’s in the statute, so, yeah.
MR. VEPREK: Right. I mean, there’s a chicken-and-egg sort of thing here. Of course, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do the one to start with.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right. I mean, I’ve made the case that you sort of – you should withdraw from the pact just as the first step to make the case for changing the statute.
MR. VEPREK: But your point about, like, what could go wrong, right? You accept one of these treaties or instruments based on current situation and then it gets expanded in the future or used in different ways in the future. Back in – let’s see, this would have been 2017, we had a similar issue with something called the Global Compact on Migration.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Yeah, I was going to ask about that.
MR. VEPREK: Oh yes. And so –
MR. KRIKORIAN: You could tell us a little bit about what that is.
MR. VEPREK: Oh, sure. This was essentially an explicit attempt to expand the scope of the Refugee Convention. The advocates at the time, however, knew they could never get it through as a treaty, and so they attempted to do it as a so-called soft law instrument, which is to say nonbinding declaration, which then clever attorneys and bureaucrats can use to interpret their national laws.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Became more and more binding, basically.
MR. VEPREK: Exactly. You know, the joke is it’s only nonbinding until a bunch of international lawyers get together in The Hague and decide it isn’t, right?
MR. KRIKORIAN: (Laughs.) And so this was – this happened under Obama, was that – right? Or –
MR. VEPREK: Well, so it was negotiated under President Obama.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right.
MR. VEPREK: And then, in the first Trump administration, we said we are not participating.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right.
MR. VEPREK: And that was – that policy was changed under the Biden administration and the United States acceded to it. Now, we have since gotten out of it, along with the Global Compact on Refugees, which was sort of companion instrument. And then the Sustainable Development Goals, which is sort of a panoply of aspirational goals that the United Nations has been pushing for some years, and includes some particular objectives related to migration that, frankly, aren’t consistent with our perspective.
MR. KRIKORIAN: And so we were not – I mean, continuing, we weren’t bound by these protocols or whatever – I forget what they call them, these compacts, that’s right.
MR. VEPREK: Right, it’s –
MR. KRIKORIAN: We weren’t bound by them, but we – had we signed them? I mean, what was the sort of –
MR. VEPREK: There were – yeah, there wasn’t a signature process; it was, rather, a session by resolution at the United Nations.
MR. KRIKORIAN: I see. OK.
MR. VEPREK: So –
MR. KRIKORIAN: Trying to bootstrap it into something that would sort of –
MR. VEPREK: Exactly, exactly. So, yes, you’re correct, we were not bound in a legal sense, at least until some clever lawyers and bureaucrats figure out how to get it in our regulations or our policies or just SOPs.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right, right.
So, to go sort of more back to the big picture, what is the – how should countries deal with refugees? What is the way we should be helping refugees? And maybe even think about it as a hierarchy; in other words, should resettlement – permanent resettlement in a third country be, like, the last resort kind of thing? I mean, how do you guys think on that?
MR. VEPREK: Yeah. And this is me speaking a little out of school here, or rather in a very unofficial sort of way. I would say permanent resettlement in third countries should be the last resort. But looking back, say, like, the most upstream you can get, in the refugee context in the migration context people like to talk about root causes.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right.
MR. VEPREK: I mean, the ultimate root cause in a lot of these cases is some war or conflict. So if you solve the war or conflict, which the president has been trying to do in a lot of places, then you solve the problem.
OK, then going from there and sort of downstream, there’s the possibility of resettlement in the same region like in an adjacent country, which – and I say resettlement; I mean sort of a temporary provision so that people can return home as soon as it’s safe to do so. And ultimately, that’s got to be the best solution. Why? Because people leave their country, if they never go home, how does that country ever recover, right? The country becomes a long-term – I was about to say basket case, but it’s not terribly diplomatic. So – but you really don’t –
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right. There are less diplomatic terms even beyond that. (Laughter.)
MR. VEPREK: Well, but you – I mean, countries lose their human resources that are absolutely essential for development, right?
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right, right, of course. Yeah.
MR. VEPREK: And so you end up in these situations where they then become long-term dependent on other countries. That’s not what anybody wants. We want people to go home and build their countries as soon as it’s possible.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right, right.
I wonder if we could talk a little bit more about remigration. You have the Office of Remigration. And that’s become kind of a buzzword in Europe, too, and you know, some people are trying to kind of problematize the word, that kind of – make it a big deal. Whom do we want – who do we want to remigrate? And what’s the – what’s the kind of thinking behind remigration?
MR. VEPREK: Well, I’ll say who we want to remigrate is, one, anyone who doesn’t want to be here, right?
MR. KRIKORIAN: (Laughs.) Or anyone that’s –
MR. VEPREK: But, two, anytime we don’t want –
MR. KRIKORIAN: Yeah, right.
MR. VEPREK: Anyone we don’t want to be here.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right.
MR. VEPREK: So I mentioned earlier situations where we have people who have been ordered removed from the United States, and either we’re going to send them back to their home country, right – and so we need the home country to facilitate their return – or for some reason we can’t send them back to the home country. Maybe they raise a protection claim and say I can’t go back to that country. OK, so then we work on finding a third country for them to go to. So those are people who we want to leave but they don’t want to leave.
But there’s also a fair number of people who would, in fact, like to go home. And we –
MR. KRIKORIAN: So what’s the problem with them?
MR. VEPREK: Sometimes it’s resources, right? And so, for this, we’re trying to make it easier for them to go home. So DHS is running a program called Project Homecoming for, essentially, voluntary return. They use the CBP Home app.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right.
MR. VEPREK: Right. You go on the CBP Home app and say: I want to go home. They will help get you home. They will help get you travel documents. They’ll pay for your ticket. There’s also some assistance for reintegration back home. So DHS is administering this, but it’s actually funded out of the State Department with Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration.
So, you know, you were asking earlier about what has changed compared to the last administration. You know, here is one very concrete example where previously we were spending money to get people to the United States. We were paying NGOs and international organizations for these waystations, essentially, in Central America to facilitate migratory flows to the United States. Now, working with the Department of Homeland Security, we’re using similar funds to help people get back to their home countries when they’re ready to leave. And, honestly, it’s a great deal for us because to involuntarily remove somebody costs in the tens of thousands of dollars, right?
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right.
MR. VEPREK: These removals, these voluntary removals, on average cost $5,000 or less.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right, right.
Your mentioning the U.N. and this funding made me think of reporting we’ve done about various either directly from the U.N. or NGOs funded by the U.N. that were giving out, you know, cash, cards, and what have you in Central America to illegal immigrants coming to the U.S. What role does PRM have in kind of reassessing our relationship with the U.N., who we give money to through the U.N., et cetera? What –
MR. VEPREK: Yeah. I’ll mention on that specific thing Todd Bensman did a lot of excellent work kind of exposing that, and we’re certainly not doing that anymore.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right.
MR. VEPREK: Now, with regard to the U.N. and who we’re working with in the U.N. system – and this is kind of a broader sort of issue because the administration recently, I’ll say, conducted – it’s not past tense; it’s still ongoing, only the first round has happened – conducted a review of U.S. participation in international organizations. So the first round of that involved our – that is, the United States – withdrawing from around 60 or so organizations. And the review continues.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Not just migration-related, just everything, all the –
MR. VEPREK: Correct. Just across the board, right.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Can you think of any off the top of your head?
MR. VEPREK: Oh, that we’re – that we withdrew from?
MR. KRIKORIAN: Yeah, that we actually pulled out of.
MR. VEPREK: Sorry, I’d have to go back and look at the list. It’s –
MR. KRIKORIAN: That’s all right. That’s all right. It’s not your job, so –
MR. VEPREK: Been a while since I looked that list. But, you know, we’re continually assessing our engagement with these international organizations to find out – like, we don’t engage with international organizations for the sake of engagement; we engage with international organizations because it is in our interest. Sometimes they do things for us that are useful or that we can’t do alone.
And let me give an example, actually, from a previous assignment I was in not related to migration now. You mentioned I’m a career Foreign Service officer. I was previously stationed at the U.S. Mission to International Civil Aviation Organization, which is a U.N. technical body. Pretty, like, low key.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Which is really important, frankly, I mean. Yeah.
MR. VEPREK: Right. Here’s an international organization that does something that’s actually important. And that’s the way we should be thinking about our engagement with international organizations, is how does it advance our interests. And that’s what we need to be doing.
MR. KRIKORIAN: It’s always – that’s been my thinking on these multilateral agreements or treaties in general. I mean, civil aviation, delivery of the mail, telephone connections, all that stuff is obviously something we need to have multilateral agreements on. But something like the Refugee Protocol or the Convention Against Torture, which has immigration provisions to it, these are – include signatories who obviously have not the slightest intention of ever honoring any of those provisions. I think Saudi Arabia is a signatory to the Torture Convention. I don’t want you to say anything that’s going to get the government in trouble, but to me that seems improbable. China is a signatory to the refugee treaty. So it just seems to me that the whole idea of these kind of multilateral agreements that don’t relate to the things – practical things you were mentioning like civil aviation, telephone service, delivery of the mail, underwater – you know, what do they call them?
MR. VEPREK: The cables.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Cables, exactly. That, obviously, you need cooperation, and it doesn’t matter what the government is like that’s signing that. But these other things bind us but not many of the other signatories, including the Refugee Convention in my opinion.
So, anyway, I had an idea that was a practical idea I wanted to see if you guys have thought about. This is something one of our people – Nayla Rush, who’s a refugee expert – has talked about, is: Why not have conditional green cards for refugees? Because you’re a refugee for a year. You’re under a(n) actual status, a refugee status, and after a year you’re supposed to apply for a green card. But if it were a conditional green card, say for two years – the same way it is for spouses to make sure that in the spousal case you’re actually, you know, married to the person and living with them and it’s not a bogus thing – for refugees it seems to me it would have a dual purpose: One, to root out fraudsters; but also, in two years things may have changed. And so you have built in the opportunity to make it a temporary thing. Is this something you all have considered at all?
MR. VEPREK: Is this the idea of making it something more like temporary protected status?
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right, exactly. Yeah.
MR. VEPREK: Yeah. This is more sort of in the USCIS wheelhouse.
MR. KRIKORIAN: OK.
MR. VEPREK: But very consistent – the proposal is very consistent with the principle that I was mentioning – one of these reform principles I mentioned earlier about what we’d like to do in the international refugee and asylum system, and that – the idea that a refugee sort of status would not necessarily be permanent, and as you say if things get better in your home country then you don’t need that status; you can go home.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right. You should be able to, anyway.
But, so, the various refugee resettlement contractors kind of had a – I don’t know what the word is. I think they call it client politics in political science. They had sort of captured PRM, and it was – PRM was kind of their government agency. What are your relationships like now with, say, Catholic Charities or HIAS or Lutheran Refugee Services, or World Relief, or whatever, the whole bunch of them like that?
MR. VEPREK: Well, I’ll say with regard to domestic resettlements now that we’ve handed that off to Health and Human Services, we probably have some residual business with them related to winding down the cooperative agreements we had with them.
MR. KRIKORIAN: OK. Mmm hmm.
MR. VEPREK: But beyond that, we’re not engaging with them on any kind of policy level.
MR. KRIKORIAN: OK. Interesting.
MR. VEPREK: Honestly, I think they might all – they might be involved in some litigation against us. (Laughs.)
MR. KRIKORIAN: Oh, really? OK. So you might not be able to talk about it, yeah.
MR. VEPREK: Well, I don’t know. This is without checking. I couldn’t tell you off the top of my head right now, yeah.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Yeah, yeah. No, I understand. I don’t want to get you in trouble.
MR. VEPREK: (Laughs.)
MR. KRIKORIAN: So we have a question here, and you kind of referred to this: Do you plan to – what are you thinking about raising the refugee cap either now, for this year, or for next year? And would that be to admit more minorities from South Africa or kind of more – are you looking at kind of casting the net a little wider for a future fiscal year?
MR. VEPREK: Right. Not to get ahead of the White House or the president on this, because it ultimately will be his decision, but I think definitely we are looking to think about the next fiscal year, but also before that we’re looking at the pace of resettlement right now and thinking about how quickly it’s going, and do we need to increase the ceiling for the current fiscal year as well.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Oh, really? And you can do that, right? I mean, how does that work for –
MR. VEPREK: There is a procedure for doing so that’s similar to the process for establishing the ceiling at the beginning of the fiscal year.
MR. KRIKORIAN: OK.
And the statute says that there’s supposed to be consultation with, like, local communities. Is that – is any of that happening, and how would that change? What are you thinking in that regard?
MR. VEPREK: Well, the president has directed this in an early – fairly early executive order this administration, saying we have to maximize consultation, give opportunities to the states and localities to have a say in the placement of refugees. So we’ll work closely with the Department of Health and Human Services to make sure that that is operationalized properly.
I’ll mention in the first Trump administration the president had ordered that and we were working on implementing it, and we got jammed up in litigation.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right, yeah. I remember that.
MR. VEPREK: I’m hoping we don’t have a similar problem this time.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right.
So there’s a question here about the credibility of claims made through international partners like UNHCR. And I mean, sort of if we’re broadly speaking what that makes me – what I really want to ask about is, most refugees being resettled were just referred to us by UNHCR in the past.
MR. VEPREK: In the past yes.
MR. KRIKORIAN: In the past. That’s what I’m saying. So what is the actual process now? Do we rely on local posts? Does the State Department kind of do their own kind of digging and decide here’s somebody that warrants resettling? How is that – how is that sort of work going forward?
MR. VEPREK: So right now we have, for the resettlement program that’s operating in South Africa, initially people can actually go online and express interest there, and that’s sort of our intake point. And then we also have some local partners, local organizations in South Africa who can refer cases in. But anyone who gets referred in that way, when they’re adjudicated as a refugee you’re going to have an officer from USCIS who’s looking at the case and making sure that person meets the legal standards for refugee status.
MR. KRIKORIAN: And how do you – I mean, coming here is a pretty valuable thing, and you know, fraud has been a big problem in all of this. How do you – is there anything new or different that you all are doing to try to screen out fraudulent claims, fraudulent claimants?
MR. VEPREK: Yes, although I would have to point to USCIS for the details on this because they actually handle the adjudication of the cases. But they’ve definitely –
MR. KRIKORIAN: Even abroad?
MR. VEPREK: Yes, they do. Yes.
MR. KRIKORIAN: OK.
MR. VEPREK: They have the legal authority for that.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right.
MR. VEPREK: And so we work closely with them to make sure that they have the facilities they need to do this. We’re sort of running the processing up to the point where USCIS comes in.
MR. KRIKORIAN: I see. OK.
MR. VEPREK: And then, at the point of adjudication, you have USCIS doing the interviews. But they have definitely devoted greater fraud prevention resources. Their fraud detection and national security unit is much more involved in the day to day of what’s going on there.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Now, you may not be able to answer – talk about this for some reason, but somebody has asked about the SIV issue. And if there anything you can say about that, or is that kind of tied up in litigation, or what’s the story with that?
MR. VEPREK: No, I’ll mention –
MR. KRIKORIAN: These are the special immigrant visas.
MR. VEPREK: That’s right, so special immigrant visas. So I don’t handle this directly. There is at the State Department the Bureau of South (and) Central Asian Affairs, and my colleagues in the Bureau of Consular Affairs handle this more directly. But I should mention there was an event that CIS sponsored with Ben Franklin Fellowship on the Hill in January, I believe.
MR. KRIKORIAN: That’s our CIS, not USCIS. (Laughs.)
MR. VEPREK: Pardon me, that’s right. Exactly. And so I did have the opportunity to give somewhat longer remarks there, so I’d probably refer back to that.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Oh, yeah. And I think – Phil, are they online, his remarks at the Ben Franklin Fellowship website? Just google the Ben Franklin Fellowship and it’ll show up.
Somebody had some – there’s some specific questions. And, like you had said, you know, one of the ways is if you resolve a war then there’s not as many people leaving. Somebody asked about the Rohingya refugees from Burma who are in Bangladesh, and someone else asked about the peace deal between Congo – Congo-Kinshasa and Rwanda, and Thailand and Cambodia –
MR. VEPREK: That’s right.
MR. KRIKORIAN: – the president has also talked about his settling. Have those – can you – do you get a sense those made any difference in reducing refugee flows, at least the second ones, not the Rohingya?
MR. VEPREK: Well, the Rohingya one is a very difficult situation and it’s been running for a long time, and I don’t think I’m in a situation to comment on that one right now.
I think in – what we have seen in eastern Congo, yes, we have seen some improvement there; definitely, Thailand-Cambodia I would say as well. But we can look at situations maybe closer to home like Venezuela, for example.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right.
MR. VEPREK: Right? Venezuelans want to go home. The government of Venezuela wants Venezuelans to go home.
MR. KRIKORIAN: And we want them to go home, so.
MR. VEPREK: Right. So I think that’s a great example.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Now that we’re talking about countries, what about Cuba? I mean if Cuba’s – and again, you don’t want to get yourself in trouble, so feel free. But I mean, Cuba in a sense looks like it’s next on the list after Venezuela and Iran. And that depends, obviously, on what happens in Iran. But you know, there is at least the potential for Cuba – for our refugee/migration relationship with Cuba to kind of be returned to something more like a normal relationship, because now it’s still a hangover from the Cold War. You guys – I mean, is there any sort of thinking ahead about what we’re going to do with Cuba?
MR. VEPREK: Well, certainly don’t want to get ahead of the president on that one. But I think you’re correct that there’s definitely potential for a kind of more normal relationship with regard to migration there.
MR. KRIKORIAN: So this is kind of a more general question, but you know, PRM deals with global immigration stuff. The president has been – is the Trump administration still encouraging other countries to restrict immigration? In other words, because this is something Secretary Rubio said, that mass migration is actually a problem just generally speaking, not even talking about the United States. Any sort of – what’s the administration’s perspective on that issue?
MR. VEPREK: No, this is a great point. And this is a conversation we have with a number of European countries. Look, countries set their migration policies as suits them, but if they are encouraging open borders, encouraging mass migratory flows, and serving as transit countries, that’s not something that stops with them, right? It can have consequences for their neighbors or people who are transiting third countries to get to the sort of magnet country, if you like.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right.
MR. VEPREK: We are seeing in Europe an increasing understanding of the problems inherent in the sort or open borders ideology that was dominant for the last I don’t know how many years you would say, certainly 10 years at least. And so you see this politically in a lot of European countries, an increasing sort of skepticism about these things. Even at the level of the European institutions like the EU, they’re doing these migration pacts and other arrangements among them.
I’m cautiously optimistic about these things. When I look at these arrangements, I see a lot of consultant-speak in there and a lot of sort of internationalist gobbledygook, but kind of wading through it I see some glimmers of hope that our European friends are starting to see things more like the secretary articulated in his speech in Munich. We hope they get it and we hope they’re able to change course because, like, the secretary says, we need civilizational allies.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right. So I know temporary protected status is not specifically something you all deal with, but there is a State Department role in it. And specifically, if TPS is withdrawn – and that’s an issue with regard to Haitians, maybe, depending on what happens; and Syrians; and others – assisting in return is something presumably that PRM would be involved in. So what’s – I mean, what’s your – what’s your take on TPS? What’s PRM’s role in it, that kind of thing?
MR. VEPREK: Yeah. Well, again speaking informally, my take on TPS is it should be temporary. (Laughter.)
MR. KRIKORIAN: It’s in the name.
MR. VEPREK: Yeah, yeah. Now, PRM doesn’t have a formal role in it. As you mentioned, this is an authority of the secretary of homeland security. The statute requires consultation with other agencies. It doesn’t specify the agencies, though. Historically, they’ve consulted with the State Department.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right.
MR. VEPREK: Makes some sense. But you know, if a – if a TPS designation is rescinded and then, you know, Haiti, for example, you have people from Haiti who need to go home, then – or, sorry, Project Homecoming, that I mentioned earlier, could certainly facilitate that, right, people from Haiti or from anywhere else.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right.
Have a question about the immigration courts. And you don’t – obviously, that’s not even in DHS; that’s in the DOJ. But one of their issues is asylum, is the big – the huge backlog. And any thoughts on how the United States can balance the need, as you articulated, for much more thorough vetting without kind of quotas and targets, without rubber stamping, without the old get-to-yes culture and the huge backlogs that face the immigration courts?
MR. VEPREK: Oof. Wow. I don’t even know where to start on that one.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Yeah. (Laughs.)
MR. VEPREK: You know, I think in the past you’ve had situations where – maybe not even in the past; maybe even in the present – you have situations where attorneys in immigration court, attorneys for aliens in immigration court, are pointing to situations in a foreign country and saying: Look how terrible it is, judge. You can’t possibly send my client back there. But I’ll mention that situations in countries, countries aren’t – they’re not uniform, right, in the sense that the situation in the capital of a country could be pretty tough –
MR. KRIKORIAN: So not just between countries, but even within countries.
MR. VEPREK: Well, within a country, right?
MR. KRIKORIAN: Yeah. Right.
MR. VEPREK: The idea is just because the situation in the capital city or some other city in the country’s pretty tough, and let’s say there’s persecution by local security forces or something there, does that mean the person couldn’t live somewhere else in that same country, right?
Let me make a very – give a concrete example of this. Once upon a time I was the senior country officer for Indonesia in the State Department, and some colleagues at DHS in the context of some type of protection determination came to us and said: Hey, we want some information about what is going on in Indonesia. We have an Indonesian here who’s from Sumatra and says he can’t return to Indonesia because he will suffer persecution on account of his being homosexual. And I said, OK, is there a reason why he can’t live somewhere else in Indonesia?
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right.
MR. VEPREK: Right? Bali is not Sumatra, right?
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right.
MR. VEPREK: And if you look at Mexico, not everywhere in northern – like, the Yucatan area is not the border area, right?
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right.
MR. VEPREK: And so oftentimes in looking at these protection claims I wish that our colleagues in the immigration courts could have, say, greater fidelity or greater level of detail about information about country conditions. It would likely help their decision-making when it comes to deciding can a person live somewhere else in his home country.
MR. KRIKORIAN: But isn’t a lot of that on the State Department to provide country condition reports? And so, I mean, again I don’t want to get you trouble –
MR. VEPREK: (Laughs.)
MR. KRIKORIAN: – but would this suggest that maybe State Department’s own reporting should be a little more nuanced and granular, in other words saying that if you’re in western Sumatra, which is where Islamists have a strong presence, yeah, being gay is a problem, but if you’re in Bali less so?
MR. VEPREK: I think that’s an excellent suggestion.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right. Yeah. Go take it back to the – take it back to the office.
MR. VEPREK: (Laughs.)
MR. KRIKORIAN: So this is a kind of basic question for everything the administration is doing: What measures, if any, are you taking to try to ensure that these reforms aren’t just undone by President AOC when she takes over in 2029?
MR. VEPREK: (Laughs.) This is an excellent question, something we do think about. I’ll mention, well, in the first Trump administration, as we reduced the number of refugees settled in the – settled in the United States, I recall a lot of angst, let’s say, in the press, in the activist community that because we were reducing the number coming in and these resettlement agencies were compensated by the head, it greatly reduced their capacity.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right. They were atrophied, basically. Yeah.
MR. VEPREK: And it took them time to rebuild. So that naturally is happening now.
I’ll mention also when it comes to – you know I was talking earlier about Consular Affairs and sort of visa work. When I came in in 2002, we all had in mind what had just happened in 9/11. If we can do something to train our consular officers in a much more rigorous fashion about what the threats are, how we should conduct screening and vetting, and even upstream from that how are we selecting people for the State Department, right – are we selecting people who want to work for the State Department because they love their country and they want to advance the concrete national interests of the United States, or are we recruiting people who want to work for the State Department because they like the international lifestyle and want to save the world? I’m a –
MR. KRIKORIAN: Ah. Striped-pants cookie pushers is the way that’s often –
MR. VEPREK: Well, I think – I think you can wear striped pants and do either.
MR. KRIKORIAN: OK. (Laughs.)
MR. VEPREK: But the question is – I left my striped pants at home today. Sorry. (Laughter.) It’s a question of what’s the motivation in coming in.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right, right. Of course.
MR. VEPREK: And if you look at, say, the recruitment materials for the State Department in recent years, they have been a little too focused on that latter category of person who, like, wants the international experience and the international humanitarian approach. We’re trying to change that right now. The State Department has launched a new sort of recruiting campaign for Foreign Service officers. We would like to attract people who aren’t from the coasts, maybe people who didn’t think about this as a career but love their country and want to serve their country overseas.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Along those lines, Foreign Service Institute – whatever it’s called now, the Foreign Affairs Training something – anyway –
MR. VEPREK: National Foreign Affairs Training Center.
MR. KRIKORIAN: – is – has a new director, as I understand? I just read this. Are migration issues playing a greater part in that orientation and training for new Foreign Service officers?
MR. VEPREK: Yes. We’ve had a couple of – the orientation class they call A-100. It’s an old name. We’ve run, I think, two or three of those since we revised the training for new Foreign Service officers, and I’ve had the privilege of going and addressing them and kind of explaining to the new Foreign Service officers: Look, this is what we’re doing in this administration. There’s a reason why, if you look at the Agency Strategic Plan, border control and migration is the first objective you will find there.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Just one last question, to go back to a particular country. Obviously, there’s a lot going on in Iran now. Is the –is PRM – is one of the things that you all do look ahead at where refugee flows might be happening in the future? In other words – and I bring this up in the context of Iran because at least there’s a potential that there would be some significant refugee flow from there. In other words, my point is, are you looking over the horizon at where the next refugee crisis might be?
MR. VEPREK: A little bit in a, to use an internet trope, monitoring-the-situation sort of way.
MR. KRIKORIAN: (Laughs.)
MR. VEPREK: What I have found in the past is that monitoring the situation was sort of much more active in a way of – in an attempt to drive policy.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Right.
MR. VEPREK: We are not trying to drive policy here. The president determines what the policy is, and we’re going to implement it. That said, we don’t want to be caught off-guard.
MR. KRIKORIAN: We just had a last question, which is a good question. I should have thought to ask this: What’s the relationship now – what’s the United States’ relationship – with UNHCR, with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees? Because they were almost kind of a partner, equal partner, in the issue of refugee resettlement here. I assume that’s –
MR. VEPREK: No, that’s – you make a great point. They were resettling – they were referring to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program thousands and thousands of refugees every year, and a lot of us had concerns with that process because they were the first gate in the process, right? God knows what sort of coaching or other sorts of things were going on there.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Oh, I see.
MR. VEPREK: There were – there were persistent allegations about that. We have taken them out of that.
MR. KRIKORIAN: But even apart from fraud or what have you, their interest is not our interest, you know what I mean? So –
MR. VEPREK: Exactly.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Yeah.
MR. VEPREK: Exactly. Well, they’re not involved in that process anymore.
MR. KRIKORIAN: OK.
MR. VEPREK: That said, they have been – we have coordinated with them in a number of different places. So, for example, if we have an arrangement with a country to do – to handle protection claims under a safe third country agreement, if that country says, look, we’re willing to help you out on this but we need some help building the capacity of our asylum system, could the United States provide resources to UNHCR to come in and do that –
MR. KRIKORIAN: I see.
MR. VEPREK: – that’s something we’re totally willing to talk about. And UNHCR is willing to coordinate with us on that.
I’ll mention also UNHCR just selected a new head, a fellow named Barham Salih, who used to be the president of Iraq and had, you know, many other positions in Iraq beforehand. And he’s looking to reform that organization in ways that I think are generally consistent with what we want to see in international organizations.
MR. KRIKORIAN: And we’ve been one of the biggest funders of UNHCR.
MR. VEPREK: Yes.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Are we still doing that?
MR. VEPREK: We’re spending a lot of money on UNHCR. We might still be their biggest funder overall. We are spending somewhat less money on UNHCR than we were before.
MR. KRIKORIAN: Good.
Well, thank you, Andrew – Andrew Veprek, assistant secretary of state for Population, Refugees, and Migration. This was very illuminating. I hope I didn’t get you in any trouble, but that’s all right. That’s a – that’s a(n) occupational hazard.
So the – for those who maybe wanted to get the quote, you know, in verbatim, this is going to be on our website, the whole video of it, so you’ll be able to watch it all over again as a rerun, just like the – I watched reruns when I was a kid. And also, as a pre-run, we are going to have in May a similar discussion to this with Todd Lyons, who’s the acting head of ICE and who is, you know – is sort of outbound there. And so we’re going to have a conversation with him sometime in May.
So thank you all for coming. Thanks for those of you tuning in. And thanks especially, Andrew, to you. (Applause.)
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