US presidential election 2024: Donald Trump’s crackdown on refugees could impact Congolese lives on battlefield in Wisconsin

On an autumn Sunday in the US election battleground state of Wisconsin, Masomo Rugama and other members of the Congolese community danced and sang to worship in their native Kinyamulenge. The women wore colorful dresses, the men usually suits. Little children in their Sunday best ran down the aisles. They prayed for a good outcome of the presidential election.

This Congolese church is one of several in the town of Appleton that have sprung up to serve a growing number of refugees who have settled there after fleeing the war-torn African country.

Rugama, 31, came to the United States in 2016 after six years in a refugee camp in Uganda. It had only been months Donald Trump would win the presidency and decimate the refugee resettlement program that had brought him there legally.

Rugama, who became a U.S. citizen in 2022, is new to U.S. politics but is well aware that Trump has repeatedly portrayed Congolese immigrants as formerly imprisoned criminals — despite some evidence of widespread criminality among them — and that he is expected to will again significantly reduce the number of refugees from abroad.

Rugama gives Trump the benefit of the doubt. “I think he may have never met a Congolese,” he said.

Rugama’s brother and sister, his nieces and nephews and his mother-in-law are still waiting in Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya hoping to complete the long vetting process for resettlement. They look at the American presidential election campaign that Trump is facing Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris from afar, he said, wondering what the outcome could mean for their hopes of resettling there.

While the refugee resettlement program has enjoyed strong bipartisan support in the past, Trump has portrayed it as a security problem. The difference between the two candidates on this issue could not be greater.

Trump is expected to temporarily suspend the U.S. refugee admissions program and then scale back the number of refugees if re-elected, following what he did during his 2017-2021 presidency.

Trump’s first-term efforts to control refugees, by cutting the admissions cap to a record low 15,000, were part of a broader effort to limit both legal and illegal immigration, which he has pledged to further will implement if he wins. The inflammatory rhetoric about immigrants is also uncomfortable for some conservative pastors, who point to the Bible’s call to care for refugees.

“Congo, Africa, just released a lot of people, a lot of people from their jails and prisons, and brought them to the United States of America,” Trump said at a press conference in May. There is no evidence for this claim.

Asked about his plans for refugees, the Trump campaign said in a statement that the Biden administration had “unconscionably abused our refugee and asylum system” and that Trump would “restore his effective immigration policies” and implement “a brand new crackdown.”

It has taken President Joe Biden’s administration nearly four years to ramp up the refugee program again, as deep budget cuts during Trump’s term led resettlement agencies to cut staff and dismantle infrastructure, which took time to rebuild build.

But last fiscal year the US resettled more refugees – 100,000 – than in thirty years. Of these, the Congolese were the largest nationality; about 20,000 had been resettled, according to U.S. State Department data.

The prospect of his relatives’ affairs being postponed worries Rugama, who sends them money he earns as a team leader at Nestlé to support them while they wait.

Rugama is a member of the Banyamulenge, a tribe in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo that has long faced discrimination and violence due to their ethnic ties to Rwanda’s Tutsi community. During last year’s Congolese elections, the Banyamulenge faced hate speech and voter suppression.

“We come from a war zone, where we were discriminated against,” he said. “We don’t want to see discrimination.”

Rugama will vote for the first time in the November 5 US presidential election in Wisconsin, one of seven battleground states that could decide the presidency. Trump lost the state to Biden, a Democrat, by about 21,000 votes in 2020, and polls show a tight race against Harris. Outagamie County, a Republican-leaning area where Appleton is located, went for Trump in 2020 and 2016 but backed Democrat Barack Obama in 2008.

At another Congolese church in Appleton, Mia Mukendi, 34, pushed her three-month-old baby out of a service. Mukendi, who came to the US as a refugee in 2016, said she was hurt by Trump’s comments. “It’s crazy, it’s not true. He hates people for no reason.” She is now a U.S. citizen and said she voted for Harris.

Her pastor, Robert Mutombo, said Trump’s comments about Congo had been widely shared in local Congolese WhatsApp messaging groups.

Some people, he said, thought it was simply campaign bombast or that Trump was fed misinformation. Others were concerned about the possible consequences of the rhetoric. Everyone remembered his previous actions against refugees.

“Even as a Congolese, I might be ashamed to say somewhere that I’m Congolese because everyone would think, ‘Oh, these are the guys that President Trump was talking about,’” Mutombo said.

At a recent event Mutombo attended with several evangelical pastors, another pastor apologized to him for Trump’s comments, he said.

This month, several hundred conservative evangelical Christian leaders and pastors across the country signed an open letter to both candidates, urging them to avoid “offensive,” dehumanizing language about immigrants.

The letter also cited a Lifeway Research poll from January 2024, which found that more than two-thirds of evangelicals believe the United States has a moral responsibility to accept refugees.

Joel Zeiner, lead pastor of Christ the Rock Church in the Appleton area, said he signed the letter because partisan politics and rhetoric surrounding refugees concerned him.

After several members asked the church to talk about issues surrounding the election, he put together a series of sermons called “The Politics of Jesus,” in which he suggested people think twice about putting up yard signs, for example, to prevent that they would alienate themselves from others in the church. community.

“The message was led by your faith, led by your identity as a follower of Jesus and be very careful how you express your political identity,” Zeiner said. “Love God with all your mind and all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

He said this message was “challenging” for some church members.

Last Sunday, after a passionate sermon on gratitude, Pastor Mutombo went home to get ready for his night shift as a machine operator in a cheese factory.