Refugee Wind Down

Lawrence Bartlett, State Department refugee chieftain sidelined? by Ann Corcoran 1/10/18

The federal refugee contractors, that altogether receive over a half a billion a year of your money to place refugees in your towns and cities, must be using reporters at Reuters to get their messages out to the public.

Here we have news that Lawrence Bartlett, some of you have seen his advocacy for more refugees (and antipathy to local citizens) first hand, has been sidelined at the US State Department.  Later in the Reuters story he says, not so fast!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. official who has been a defender of refugees has been sidelined within the State Department in what some advocates and former officials fear is part of the Trump administration’s goal of limiting refugee resettlement in the United States.

Lawrence Bartlett, head of refugee admissions at the State Department’s Population, Refugees and Migration bureau, is now on a temporary assignment at another office, a State Department spokeswoman said.

Bartlett’s future leadership of the refugee office has been in doubt for months. He is now a temporary senior adviser at the State Department office that handles requests for information under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Sending a civil servant of his experience and rank to that office is unusual, according to current and former U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A current official described such a re-assignment as a form of internal exile like being sent “to Siberia.” Really! Is that why the State Department has an abysmal record and reputation for not answering FOIA requests?  Either they do nothing there or they work really hard to figure out what not to tell you. When they do tell you, it is YEARS later! Is that why it is like Siberia?

Bartlett says he has “NOT been permanently reassigned.”

Bartlett did not respond to a range of questions about his new role, but did say he has not been told the assignment is permanent.

“I can assure you that I have NOT been permanently reassigned from my position with the refugee program,” Bartlett wrote in an e-mail to Reuters.

Refugee advocates say Bartlett was a strong and effective advocate for the resettlement program inside the Trump administration.

I found this little nugget (below) interesting. Here we learn that the State Department Bureau of Population Refugees and Migration bureaucrats chit-chat via e-mail regularly with their contractors.  Hey! what about us! We pay for all this, why can’t we see those e-mails. Gee maybe we could FOIA them!

Since approximately November, Bartlett has not been included on communications between the State Department and outside refugee agencies that he normally would have been, one person involved in refugee resettlement said.

Keep reading here.

Reuters quotes Hans (again). So is Hans Van de Weerd the conduit for getting anti-Trump messages out of the DOS and Homeland Security and to Reuters?

See my complete Lawrence Bartlett archive here. Prior to being assigned to the FOIA office, Bartlett was in Puerto Rico for a month, here.

https://refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpress.com/2018/01/10/lawrence-bartlett-state-department-refugee-chieftain-sidelined/