Commissioners in Burleigh County, North Dakota are set to vote on whether their county will stop accepting refugees. It is expected that they will vote to bar refugees. The state's capital Bismark is located in Burleigh County. They have a population of 95,000.

If the ban of new refugees goes through they would become the first local government to do so since President Donald Trump issued an executive order making it possible.

According to KSFY TV, the county postponed a vote last week when more than 100 people showed up and overflowed the commission’s normal meeting space. Tonight's meeting will be held in a middle school cafeteria to accommodate public interest.

Trump’s executive order this fall came as he had already proposed cutting the number of refugees next year to the lowest level since Congress passed the Refugee Act of 1980. He declared that refugees should be resettled only in places where the state and local governments gave consent. Since then, many governors and counties around the country have declared that they would continue taking refugees.


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