CANBERRA, Australia (AP) – U.S. officials stopped screening refugees held on Nauru for potential resettlement in the United States this week but will return to the Pacific atoll to continue working toward a deal that President Donald Trump has condemned as “dumb,” an Australian minister said Thursday.
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton would not say when U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials would return to Nauru to conduct what Trump describes as “extreme vetting.”
Trump made enhanced screening a condition for agreeing to honor an Obama administration deal to accept up to 1,250 refugees refused entry into Australia. Australia pays Nauru and Papua New Guinea to keep more than 2,000 asylum seekers – mostly from Iran, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka – in conditions condemned by rights groups.
The process of “extreme vetting” has yet to be explained.
U.S. officials were sent to Nauru within days of the deal’s announcement in November after the U.S. presidential election. But they left this week with arrangements under a cloud.