Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, in an interview with ABC on Sunday, defended the Biden administration’s decision to maintain Trump-era refugee caps amid capacity constraints. “It’s going to be very hard to meet the 62,000 this fiscal year,” Blinken said of the Biden administration’s earlier goal for refugee admissions, after being asked about Friday’s directive to keep the Trump administration’s cap of 15,000. President Joe Biden stated in the directive that the admission of up to 15,000 refugees this fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30, “is justified by grave humanitarian concerns and is otherwise in the national interest.” Biden justified the lower cap by citing “an unforeseen emergency refugee situation … due to new or increasing political violence, repression, atrocities, or humanitarian crises” in a number of countries, as well as “changing conditions caused by the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic.” While the directive remained silent on the influx of illegal immigrants, …