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Trump Said Local Officials Could Block Refugees. So Far, They Haven’t.

Commissioners in counties around the nation, including North Dakota, are weighing whether to admit more refugees.

Refugees were greeted by workers from Lutheran Social Services in Bismarck, N.D., in 2017.Credit...Tom Stromme/The Bismarck Tribune, via Associated Press

Commissioners in one North Dakota county voted on Monday night to continue accepting refugees, a split decision that came about because of a Trump administration policy that gives local officials the extraordinary option to reject people fleeing persecution.

The vote by the Burleigh County Commission, which followed a nearly four-hour session of public comment with emotional pleas from residents on both sides of the issue, came as governors and local officials across the country weigh an executive order by President Trump that requires local consent for new refugee arrivals.

So far, it is not believed that any local government has refused to take refugees next year. But the North Dakota commissioners voted, 3-2, to cap refugee admissions in their county at 25, about the same number as last year, and also asked for an annual report on the new arrivals. It was not immediately clear whether they had the authority to set those conditions.

The Burleigh County commissioners had originally planned to debate the issue last week, but they postponed the hearing after a large crowd turned up to speak. Ahead of the rescheduled meeting, which was moved to a middle school with more space, commissioners’ inboxes were flooded with emails from residents for and against the proposal.

“We have to be accepting of people from other places,” said Brian Bitner, the chairman of the county commission, who opposed additional resettlement. “But the question is, ‘What is that costing us and is there an impact, whether it’s financial or otherwise?’”

The vote in North Dakota followed Mr. Trump’s announcement in September that he was slashing the annual limit of refugees for the current fiscal year to 18,000, the lowest number since the resettlement program began in 1980. That same day, he issued the executive order stating that refugees would only be resettled in states and localities that offered advance written consent.

“State and local governments are best positioned to know the resources and capacities they may or may not have available to devote to sustainable resettlement,” Mr. Trump said in the executive order.

Mr. Trump’s order forced the issue of resettlement to the political forefront in places like North Dakota, a deeply conservative state where Christian groups have helped thousands of refugees acclimate over the decades. That work often played out quietly, with a network of volunteers assisting new arrivals from around the world who had escaped danger and persecution. Mr. Bitner said he had been unaware until recently that refugees were being placed in Burleigh County, which has about 95,000 residents and received 24 refugees last year.

Merci Ndaberewe, who fled war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, said he and his family had felt welcomed by North Dakotans after they arrived in Bismarck in 2016. But the recent discussions about ending resettlement, he said, had been hurtful.

“We come here to make a life and live our dream because this is a wonderful opportunity,” said Mr. Ndaberewe, 22, now a student at Bismarck State College.

Since the resettlement program began in the United States, refugees have been sent to places where they have family, where there is an existing community from their home countries or where they are likely to find jobs and affordable housing. North Dakota has a low unemployment rate and a shortage of workers.

“To me, it’s not an issue that we should even be talking about,” said Mark Armstrong, a Burleigh County commissioner who supported admitting more refugees. “These are, sometimes, skilled people that we can use. And if they’re not, they take the jobs that are paying above minimum wage in North Dakota right now.”

Last month, three resettlement agencies sued the Trump administration in federal court in Maryland, arguing that the executive order is a violation of the Refugee Act and unconstitutional because the federal government, not states and localities, has authority over immigration policy. A federal judge is expected to rule on a motion to block the executive order by late January.

Under the president’s order, written consent is required from the governor and a local authority, typically the county. The order could spark clashes between governors and localities.

“It sets up a conflict when you have a local government that wants to continue to welcome refugees but a governor who does not,” said Jennifer Quigley, director of refugee advocacy at Human Rights First, a New York-based nonprofit group. “One politician can stand in the way.”

Conversely, if a county does not consent, no refugees will be resettled there even if the governor has provided approval. Counties that approve resettlement are not allowed to specify who is placed in their community.

Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, a Republican, said he supported the continued admission of refugees to his state so long as local officials agreed. About 200 miles east of Bismarck, the county that includes Fargo decided to continue taking refugees, according to local reports.

“We support the administration giving states and local jurisdictions the consent authority on whether to continue receiving refugees, and we respect the right to exercise local control,” Mr. Burgum said in a statement on Monday. “That being said, we have serious concerns that denying resettlement to a handful of well-vetted and often family-connected refugees would send a negative signal beyond our borders at a time when North Dakota is facing a severe work force shortage and trying to attract capital and talent to our state.”

Jenny Yang, vice president for advocacy at World Relief, an evangelical agency whose work includes resettlement, has been steering an effort to lobby governors to keep their states open to refugees.

She said about 16 governors have submitted written consent, six of them Republicans. Gov. Doug Ducey, Republican of Arizona, agreed after receiving a letter supporting resettlement signed by 250 evangelical leaders. Gov. Greg Abbott, Republican of Texas, who leads the state that received the most refugees last year, has not yet offered his view, despite a plea from the mayor of Fort Worth to continue accepting refugees.

Since taking office, Mr. Trump has reduced the number of refugees that the United States is willing to resettle every year. In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, he set a cap of 30,000, down from 45,000 the previous year. President Barack Obama had set the ceiling at 110,000 during his last year in office.

In Burleigh County, which includes North Dakota’s capital city of Bismarck, the state’s arm of Lutheran Social Services said it had resettled about 675 refugees since 1997. The county has roughly 95,000 residents, about 90 percent of whom are white and about 98 percent of whom were born in the United States.

In the most recent fiscal year, Lutheran Social Services resettled about 124 refugees in North Dakota, including 24 in Bismarck. The largest number of new arrivals in the state were from the Democratic Republic of Congo, followed by those from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan.

“It’s not any large number, and we’re not anticipating to have any more than that,” said Shirley Dykshoorn, a vice president at Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota, which requested that Burleigh County vote to accept more refugees.

In recent days, Ms. Dykshoorn said, the agency had been trying to answer questions about the program and counter online misinformation. “I think that if your fears are being stoked, that sometimes it’s easier to say ‘We don’t want any’ or ‘We don’t want to do this.’”

Even if a place declines to participate in refugee resettlement, new arrivals could still move there.

Once in the United States, refugees, like anyone else, are free to travel wherever they wish. Those determined to join family members in places that have not approved resettlement are likely to relocate there, even if it means abandoning the benefits of the formal process.

“Ironically, this administration is undermining the goal of the program, which is self-sufficiency,” said Ms. Yang, the evangelical agency’s vice president. “You will have refugees going to places where they want to live but without the support they should receive.”

Mitch Smith covers the Midwest and the Great Plains. Since joining The Times in 2014, he has written extensively about gun violence, oil pipelines, state-level politics and the national debate over police tactics. He is based in Chicago.  More about Mitch Smith

Miriam Jordan is a national immigration correspondent. She reports from a grassroots perspective on the impact of immigration policy. She has been a reporter in Mexico, Israel, Hong Kong, India and Brazil. More about Miriam Jordan

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 24 of the New York edition with the headline: County Votes, Under New Trump Policy, to Allow More Refugees. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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