Trump administration limits refugee admissions to lowest on record

The Trump administration has significantly reduced the refugee admissions cap for the new fiscal year beginning this month, to 7,500, the lowest on record, according to a Federal Register memo published Thursday.

The memo, dated September 30, said admissions figures “will be primarily distributed among South African Afrikaners”, a white ethnic minority group who controlled South Africa during apartheid, as well as “other victims of unlawful or unfair discrimination in their respective countries of origin”.

The allocation of admissions to white Afrikaners is a continuation of Trump’s commitment in an executive order this year to resettle what he described as “Afrikaner refugees fleeing government-sponsored racial discrimination, including racist property confiscation,” even as he suspended refugee admissions.

The new refugee cap is a stark departure from the Biden administration’s goal of 125,000 refugees and a marked drop from the first Trump administration’s record cap of 15,000 refugees. The notice says the new cap “is justified by humanitarian concerns or is in the national interest.”

The average refugee cap for both Democratic and Republican administrations has historically hovered around 95,000.

The new action follows South African-born Elon Musk’s frequent criticism of the country’s land ownership laws against white farmers while advising Trump this year at the Department of Government Efficiency.

In his criticism, Musk pointed to the passage of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Expropriation Act, which allows the government to seize private property, sometimes without compensation, in certain circumstances “for a public purpose or in the public interest.”

The Trump administration welcomed dozens of white South Africans to the United States in May as part of its resettlement efforts, while excluding refugees from most other countries, including Afghanistan, Sudan, the Republic of Congo and Myanmar.

Trump’s executive order this year also ended U.S. aid to South Africa, much of which is channeled to the nation’s HIV/AIDS program, accusing South African officials of “confiscating the land” of minority farmers “and treating certain categories of people very poorly.”

Top Democrats on the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, including Reps. Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Alex Padilla of California, criticized Trump for the decision, saying the new cap was announced without consultation with Congress.

“This bizarre presidential decision is not only morally indefensible, but it is also illegal and invalid,” they said in a statement Thursday. “The administration has blatantly ignored the legal requirement to consult with the House and Senate Judiciary Committees before setting the annual refugee admissions cap. This process exists to ensure that decisions of such importance reflect our nation’s values, our humanitarian commitments, and the rule of law, not the racial preferences or political whims of any given president.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday on Democrats’ assertion that the move was illegal.

Shawn VanDiver, president and chairman of AfghanEvac — a California-based coalition that has helped Afghans resettle in the United States — said the cap “is an unprecedented dismantling of the U.S. refugee program and a moral collapse that abandons the very allies who stood with our troops.”