Resettlement agencies question Trump refugee limits

Daniel Salazar, a policy adviser at Global Refuge, was on a conference call with multiple refugee advocacy groups on Thursday when the news broke: the Trump administration had officially decided the United States would admit only 7,500 refugees into the country during fiscal year 2026. Of that record-low number, the slots would primarily be preserved for white Afrikaners from South Africa and other individuals facing “illegal or unjust discrimination,” according to the Federal Register announcement.

Refugee advocacy groups have responded with disappointment, frustration, and outrage. Salazar described the remainder of his Thursday conference call as an “interesting couple of hours” as attendees discussed the news. “We were all kind of reacting to it in real time,” he said.

Rumors have swirled for weeks that the administration would cap incoming refugees at a historically low number. Advocates remained hopeful the administration would ultimately decide to let more refugees in after consulting with Congress—a step required by federal law.

Those hopes fell on Thursday. Trump’s cap of 7,500 refugees is down from the 125,000 refugee limit that President Joe Biden set for fiscal year 2025.

Immigration advocates also say the Trump administration did not consult with congressional officials as federal law requires. Some also argue the language in the announcement raises legal questions. While the White House and some conservatives are defending the announcement, refugee organizations are reeling and trying to determine their next steps.

Matthew Soerens, vice president of advocacy and policy at World Relief, said he only found out about the Federal Register announcement after colleagues alerted him by text or online chat. “That’s not usually how we find out what the refugee ceiling is,” he said.

Typically, Soerens said, congressional offices that have discussed the issue with the administration inform World Relief about the number of refugees the government is willing to let into the country through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, or USRAP.

In a virtual news conference hosted by the Refugee Council USA on Friday, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., confirmed those consultations had not taken place. “The administration never consulted the majority or minority leaders of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees. Never came and spoke to Congress, despite the fact that that is required by law,” Raskin said.

Raskin also took issue with the administration’s use of the word “discrimination,” instead of the word “persecution,” in the Federal Register notice.

“It’s not the standard traditional language of ‘a well-founded fear of persecution’ and so on. It’s this new standard that seems a little bit customized to address the situation of the Afrikaners,” Raskin said.

Afrikaners, white South Africans descended primarily from Dutch settlers, are a minority in their home country. While some Afrikaners have been killed in farm attacks, South African authorities argue that’s due to the country’s high homicide rate and not targeted violence. But Trump has said that the group faces “genocide,” and the administration began admitting refugees from the group in May.

Soerens also took issue with the mention of “discrimination.”

“The administration is using the language of ‘discrimination’ in this order instead of the language of the law, which is ‘a well-founded fear of persecution,’” Soerens explained. “Not that I want anyone to be discriminated against, but persecution is a fairly high standard under the law.”

Soerens emphasized that he didn’t mean to dismiss the suffering that many Afrikaners in South Africa have endured. But he argued it didn’t compare to the persecution suffered by many religious minorities and Christians abroad.

The Immigration and Nationality Act defines refugees as people who have fled their home country because of “a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” Afrikaners in South Africa have not fled the country en masse, and only a small number of the country’s Afrikaner population have sought refuge elsewhere, according to recent media reports.

Refuge advocates argue that, by focusing on letting Afrikaners into the United States, the administration is abandoning others who are in greater danger—such as U.S. allies who have fled Afghanistan for fear of death under the Taliban regime.

“There are 3,000 individual family members of active duty military who are stuck right now—Afghans. There are 1,200 people who are stuck in our custody at Camp As Sayliyah in Doha, Qatar,” said Shawn VanDiver, president of AfghanEvac, an organization trying to assist Afghan refugees and allies of the United States. “None of those people are going to get to come, because the president set [the refugee cap] so low and only highlighted Afrikaners.”

But supporters of the rollback say a tight reduction is necessary after years of immigration mismanagement under the Biden administration. Asked about the refugee ceiling a few hours after the news broke on Thursday, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said the limit “makes some sense to me,” although he hadn’t yet seen the notice.

“We got plenty of people here in the country illegally we got to deal with,” Graham said. “One of the consequences of having the country overrun by illegal immigrants is that it hurts legal immigration. So, you know, Democrats should have thought about that.”

Simon Hankinson, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, explained that the Biden administration used refugee and humanitarian programs to sweep millions of people into the country, many of whom haven’t even had their asylum cases adjudicated.

“So many people were let in over the past four years that they probably have a backlog that’s going to take a decade to work through,” Hankinson said. “And given that number of people who are here illegally who need to be sorted through—a significant percentage of whom, in theory, are going to claim asylum—I would say a zero cap for a couple of years would make a lot of sense. So 7,500, you know, it’s kind of an arbitrary number, but I would not be surprised to see the numbers go way, way down.”

The White House told WORLD on Thursday that the administration has long signaled its intent to end Biden-era abuse of the refugee program. It insisted that it will not let any refugees into the country until consultations with Congress take place, which it said can’t occur until the government shutdown ends.

The White House did not immediately respond to a query on Friday about whether the administration consulted with Congress before releasing its Federal Register announcement. It also did not respond to a request for comment about why it chose to use the term “discrimination” in the notice instead of “persecution.”

It’s unclear whether refugee agencies might pursue legal action over the White House announcement. Laurie Ball Cooper, vice president for U.S. legal programs at the International Refugee Assistance Project, said refugee groups are still looking at the next steps. But she maintained that the Federal Register notice failed to meet basic statutory requirements laid out in federal law.

Daniel Salazar told WORLD on Thursday that discussion among resettlement agencies was “ongoing.” He added that Global Refuge is also meeting with congressional offices to discuss the issue.

“We’re trying to engage, because they have a role in it, too, right?” he said. “I mean, Congress created this system. Congress oversees it and should be consulted in how it runs.”

—with additional reporting by Carolina Lumetta