Donald Trump: I would send Syrian refugees home

From the BBC regarding a Trump campaign stop in New Hampshire:

On Wednesday night, Mr Trump told an audience at Keene High School: "I hear we want to take in 200,000 Syrians. And they could be - listen, they could be Isis [Islamic State]."

Describing them as a "200,000-man army", he later added: "I'm putting the people on notice that are coming here from Syria as part of this mass migration, that if I win, if I win, they're going back."

As a private immigration attorney, my exposure to Federal refugee programs is limited (as opposed to individual asylum cases involving persons already in the USA, or who have made it to the US border seeking asylum).  But let's take a brief look at publicly available information about US refugee programs.

From the USCIS website--USCIS stands for "United States Citizenship and Immigration Services," and it is the benefits bureau of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)--we read that:

Every year, immigration law requires that Executive Branch officials:

• review the refugee situation or emergency refugee situation.
• project the extent of possible participation of the United States in resettling refugees.
• discuss the reasons for believing that the proposed admission of refugees is justified by humanitarian concerns, grave humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest.

We also learn that:

The following agencies are involved in this effort under the aegis of a multi-agency task force known as the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) :

• Department of State/Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) – PRM has overall USRAP management responsibility overseas and has lead in proposing admissions ceilings and processing priorities. 
• United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) – UNHCR refers cases to the USRAP for resettlement and provides important information with regard to the worldwide refugee situation.
• Resettlement Support Centers (RSC) – Under cooperative agreement with the Department of State, RSCs consist of international organizations or non-governmental organizations that carry out administrative and processing functions, such as file preparation and storage, data collection and out-processing activities.
• Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – Within DHS, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has responsibility for adjudicating applications for refugee status and reviewing case decisions; the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) screens arriving refugees for admission at the port of entry.
• Department of Health and Human Services/Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) – ORR administers domestic resettlement benefits for arriving refugees.
• International Organization for Migration (IOM) – Department of State contractors serve primarily as the travel agent for the USRAP and the OPE in certain locations.
• Non-Governmental Organizations – Provide resettlement assistance and services to arriving refugees.

For the nervous nellies out there concerned about security, the U.S. State Department advises:

There will always be some limits to the U.S. Government’s ability to process individuals for resettlement on an expedited basis, and processing timelines cannot be guaranteed for any case. Two types of security checks conducted during overseas refugee processing sometimes cause delays: the security advisory opinion (SAO) and the interagency check (IAC). An individual may experience lengthy delays due to the need to run multiple security checks and some individuals may never clear the required checks. While PRM is able to request expedited processing of both checks, we do so judiciously so as not to significantly delay the processing of the tens of thousands of other cases that are considered each year.

When a refugee case is placed on hold by one or more of the agencies that conduct security clearances due to a name or other biodata match, there is sometimes little that can be done to speed the resettlement process. Although PRM has developed mechanisms for requesting expedited review, and many cases can be expedited, certain cases take time to resolve. PRM often becomes aware of the complicating issue after several weeks of processing have elapsed, delaying the expected processing timeline further.

PRM is working with other U.S. government agencies on efforts to ensure that refugee security screening does not unnecessarily limit our capacity to provide critical protection, while preventing entry of those who would pose security threats. PRM will continue its engagement with others in the U.S. government on this critical issue.

It is against this existing regulatory and adjudicatory framework that Donald Trump says: "They could be ISIS."

I won't even begin to discuss the enormous barriers to summarily removing a refugee from the United States once he or she has been admitted in that status. Suffice it to say that Trump's statements are ignorant fear-mongering at its worst, and should instantly show that this demagogic buffoon is not a serious candidate for the U.S. presidency.  

Why then, is he still "top of the polls" among the Republican "base"?