President Donald Trump has halted arrivals of refugees already cleared to enter the United States, according to a memo seen on Wednesday, as he quickly pursues a sweeping crackdown on migration.
Following an executive order signed on Monday hours after Trump took office, "all previously scheduled travel of refugees to the United States is being canceled," said a State Department email to groups working with new arrivals.
The memo asked the UN International Organization for Migration not to move refugees to transit centres and said that all processing on cases has also been suspended. Refugees already resettled in the United States will continue to receive services as planned, it said.
Trump in each of his presidential campaigns has run on promises to crack down on undocumented immigration. But the refugee move also targets a legal pathway for people fleeing wars, persecution or disasters.
In his executive order, he said he was suspending refugee admissions as of January 27 and ordered a report on how to change the program, in part by giving "greater involvement" to states and local jurisdictions, which he said were being "inundated."
It also revoked his predecessor Joe Biden's decision to consider the impact of climate change in refugee admissions.
Trump said during his election campaign that immigrants were "poisoning the blood of our country" and earlier rose to prominence questioning the citizenship of Barack Obama, the first African-American president.
Extra troops to US-Mexico border
Meanwhile, Trump ordered 1,500 more military personnel to the border with Mexico as part of a flurry of steps to tackle immigration.
The US president declared a national emergency at the US frontier with Mexico on his first day in office, and the additional personnel will bring the total number of active-duty troops deployed there to around 4,000.
"President Trump signed an executive order for 1,500 additional troops for the United States' southern border," Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters at the White House.
The additional troops include 1,000 Army personnel and 500 Marines, a senior US military official told journalists at the Pentagon.
The Marines were on call to support operations to counter devastating wildfires in California but were not activated for that effort, so they have been moved to the border mission instead, the official said on condition of anonymity.
