Worst Possible Person Selected to Run Refugee Division of State Department

Trump only hires the best, right?  Not a chance.  Andrew Veprek is an example of the worst possible person being selected to lead a division charged with making humanitarian decisions and saving lives.

Veprek, who has been working in the White House closely with waste-of-life Stephen Miller, holds very strong anti-immigration views and has now been selected for a top State Department post overseeing refugee admissions.

Veprek’s appointment as a deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) is alarming pro-immigration activists who fear that Trump is trying to effectively end the U.S. refugee resettlement program.

Veprek’s appointment [is] a blow to an already-embattled refugee bureau. Trump has made clear his disdain for...immigration...and the bureau has been adrift...even as a record 65 million people are displaced around the world because of war, famine and other calamities.

The mission of PRM is noble and represents everything America stands for.  Per its website, it “provides aid and sustainable solutions for refugees, victims of conflict and stateless people around the world, through repatriation, local integration, and resettlement in the United States.... also promotes the United States’ population and migration policies.” 

Veprek is a Foreign Service officer detailed to the White House, which listed him as an “immigration adviser” in a 2017 staff document. He has worked closely there with Miller.... In interagency debates, some administration officials have viewed Veprek as representing Miller’s hard-line views about limiting entry into the U.S. for refugees and other immigrants.

Veprek played an influential role in Trump administration’s December withdrawal from international talks on a nonbinding global pact on migration issues. He also argued in favor of dramatically lowering the nation’s annual cap on refugee admissions.... “My experience is that he strongly believes that fewer refugees should admitted into the United States and that international migration is something to be stopped, not managed,” a former U.S. official said, adding that Veprek’s views about refugees and migrants were impassioned to the point of seeming “vindictive.”

Veprek’s appointment as a deputy assistant secretary is unusual given his relatively low Foreign Service rank, the former and current State officials said, and raises questions about his qualifications.

Veprek hates the very agency he has been appointed to lead, similar to Trump-scum like Scott Pruitt, Betsy DeVos, and Mick Mulvaney.

For many years, the U.S. refugee program had strong bipartisan support. Lawmakers viewed it as an example of America’s generosity and a way to garner global goodwill. But...Trump and other Republican presidential candidates began casting refugees as a potential source of terrorism.  Democrats argued that refugees were heavily screened before being allowed to migrate to the U.S. and that instances of terrorism connected to refugees were vanishingly few.

Source: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/08/andrew-veprek-state-department-refugee-admissions-448210