The Trump administration has raised the nation’s annual refugee admissions cap from 7,500 to 17,500 for the coming year but again dictated that the vast majority must be white South Africans.
President Donald Trump slashed the 125,000 person resettlement goal set for 2025 by the Biden administration and issued an executive order claiming the predominantly Black government of South Africa persecutes Afrikaners, an accusation the nation has repeatedly denied.
The 2027 ceiling and preference for white refugees “is justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest,” according to notice of the policy published Oct. 2 in the Federal Register. “The admissions shall primarily be allocated among Afrikaners from South Africa pursuant to Executive Order 14204.”
The notice repeated the unproved claim that Afrikaners “are victims of unjust racial discrimination.” Groups largely excluded include refugees from Africa and the Middle East and from war-ravaged or repressive countries such as Afghanistan and Burma.
The administration’s 7,500 person cap for the just-ended fiscal year 2026 was the lowest in the 46-year history of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program and made Trump the first president in that span not to allow the resettlement of persecuted Christians or other religious minorities.
The administration went a step further by rounding up and re-interviewing some lawfully resettled refugees in Minnesota during its anti-immigrant crackdown in that state earlier this year.
Krish O’Mara Vignarajah
The U.S. refugee resettlement program was created with the Refugee Act of 1980 to protect people fleeing persecution or death in their home countries. The process typically includes years of vetting overseas — which Afrikaners are not undergoing — and provides work privileges and a clear pathway to citizenship.
The program’s ceiling has fluctuated significantly through the years, with 231,700 approved in 1980, 142,000 in the mid-1990s and Trump’s all-time low of 7,500 in 2026, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
“The annual refugee cap is a statement of national character, and today’s signals to the world that our nation’s promise of opportunity, safety and shelter for the vulnerable no longer hinges on humanitarian need alone,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president of Global Refuge.
As recently as 2024 the United States resettled more than 100,000 refugees from 85 countries.
The administration’s 2027 limit grants resettlement for a single nationality while as recently as 2024 the United States resettled more than 100,000 refugees from 85 countries. “A refugee program that centers one group and sidelines all others is an abdication of our global humanitarian leadership and an abandonment of thousands of vulnerable families who put their faith in our country,” she said.
The current approach “strays from a half century of global humanitarian leadership and bipartisan consensus that the United States prioritizes protection based on the danger a person faces. That standard has saved countless lives and made our communities and our nation stronger,” she added.
Myal Greene
World Relief President Myal Greene said the organization decries the latest refugee ceiling as a door closed to people persecuted because of their religious beliefs.
“At a time when displacement and persecution are at historically high levels around the world, the U.S. continues to turn its back on those in the greatest need,” Greene said. “Despite repeated promises to protect religious liberties at home and abroad, President Trump has reneged on his word — and his own precedent.”
The International Refugee Assistance Program said it will continue its legal challenges to Trump’s dismantling of the resettlement program.
“The Trump administration continues to prioritize refugee admissions for white Afrikaners while unlawfully blocking vulnerable refugees from other populations from accessing safety in the United States,” said Rricha deCant, senior director of policy and climate at IRAP. “IRAP is fighting in court to ensure the United States refugee program is restored and accessible to all people fleeing violence and persecution rather than used as a tool to advance a discriminatory political agenda.”
Vignarajah added that rebuilding the refugee resettlement program could take generations. “What’s being dismantled took decades to build. It represents a bipartisan commitment this country made to the world, and to itself, about the kind of nation we intended to be.”