The Trump administration plans to review and possibly revoke the legal status of refugees resettled in the U.S. during Joe Biden’s presidency.
The order affects more than 200,000 refugees who entered the country legally between Jan. 20, 2021, and Feb. 20, 2025, according to a federal memo reviewed by Reuters.
Joe Edlow
The document signed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Joe Edlow also freezes the processing of permanent residence applications filed by refugees during the previous administration.
“The USCIS memo, dated November 21, said the agency will terminate the refugee status of people already in the U.S. if they are found to not meet refugee criteria,” Reuters reported. “The memo claims the Biden administration potentially prioritized expediency, quantity and admissions over quality interviews and detailed screening and vetting.”
President Donald Trump has taken aggressive measures to end the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program — one of the most secure and highly vetted process for immigrants to come to the United States. His Jan. 20 order, “Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program,” cast refugee resettlement as a threat to national security and contrary to the interests of the nation. He later announced a record-low refugee cap of 7,500 for the current fiscal year and said it would be reserved mostly for white South Africans.
By comparison, refugee limits under Biden reached 125,000 per year from 2022 to 2025. Caps were set much higher in previous years, including more than 220,000 during the Reagan administration.
The Trump administration was sued in federal court over the program’s suspension and its revocation of congressionally approved resettlement funds. A district judge ordered the admission of previously cleared refugees. The litigation, Pacito v. Trump, remains under appeal before the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
However, the new USCIS memo refers to the president’s executive order freezing admissions due to the nation’s inability to “absorb large numbers of migrants,” according to Reuters.
Refugee advocates teed off on the administration’s intention to review the cases of resettled immigrants, pointing to the years of rigorous background checks and in-person interviews they underwent to be granted admission.
Krish O’Mara Vignarajah
“To relitigate cases that have already met the demanding security standards of our refugee program is a dramatic reversal of long-standing practice,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president of Global Refuge. “Moreover, a review of this scale would divert scarce government resources toward duplicative work, rather than efforts that genuinely strengthen our nation’s security and humanitarian leadership.”
The process also would severely traumatize individuals who escaped severe hardship and oppression in their home countries, she said.
“The administration is attempting to change what it means to be American by targeting who gets to belong.”
“This unprecedented decision introduces profound uncertainty into the lives of families who have endured and legally demonstrated a well-founded fear of persecution. It risks destabilizing families who have been rebuilding their lives here, working in our communities, sending their children to school, and contributing to the country they now call home.”
Refugees should receive protection instead of further punishment from the U.S. government, added Uzra Zeya, president of Human Rights First.
Uzra Zeya
“Far from being necessary, these purported ‘reviews’ and ‘re-interviews’ are a pretext for the administration’s broader unjust and discriminatory objectives,” she said. “It is abundantly clear that this policy’s impact and its ultimate goal are to deport immigrants from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East who have legal status in the United States and prevent them from becoming citizens.”
The action will destabilize families and American due process, she added. “The administration is attempting to change what it means to be American by targeting who gets to belong. The administration has hijacked the refugee resettlement capacities of the U.S. government to try to deny protection to actual refugees while misusing them to facilitate the migration of white Afrikaners.”
Church World Service condemned the directive as “cruel, illegal and massively wasteful.”
“This administration’s disdain for refugees and newcomers is well-documented, yet it continues to find new ways to outdo itself,” said CWS President Rick Santos. “The decision to review and re-interview resettled refugees — who have already passed through the most stringent of vetting processes — is not merely a re-litigation, but a retraumatizing of individuals who were assured of their safety and a chance to live free of persecution.”
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