The State Department suspended its refugee program Tuesday night, halting all refugee flights into the United States, under direction of one of President Donald Trump’s Day 1 executive orders.
The order initially was set to go into effect on Monday, and its swift implementation surprised and alarmed advocates and nonprofits, leaving some refugees who were already in transit to the U.S. stranded in intermediate countries.
“Travel has been canceled for people who had plans,” said Kathie O’Callaghan, the president of Hearts and Homes for Refugees, a nonprofit based in Westchester County, N.Y., that resettles families from around the world. “Many of these families were very close to arriving and will be in limbo.”
There are hundreds of small groups like O’Callaghan’s as well as larger organizations such as churches and international nonprofits that work with the federal government to resettle refugees around the country.
Advocates say data shows refugees are not an excessive drain on government resources and tend to go on to be successfully employed after receiving initial public assistance upon arrival. The rate of employment and participation in the labor force for refugees exceeds that of the U.S. population as a whole, according to studies.
Refugees are also subject to more elaborate security vetting than immigrants to the U.S., experts say.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a longtime advocate for refugees, said she was “alarmed” by the executive order to suspend the program.
“Stepping away from this program at a time of unprecedented displacement will put refugees’ lives at risk and ultimately weaken our nation’s long-term security,” Shaheen said in a statement Wednesday.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the program’s suspension.
The U.S. refugee resettlement program was largely decimated under the first Trump administration due to restructuring, budget cuts and the impact of the pandemic.
The Biden administration began rebuilding it, and was still working on it up until Trump took office. The just over 100,000 refugees resettled in the U.S. in the 2024 fiscal year represented a historical milestone: the most refugees resettled in the United States in three decades and a dramatic shift from the 11,454 refugees admitted into the country just three years earlier.
The U.S. government has not yet posted refugee figures for the current fiscal year, according to World Relief, a Christian humanitarian organization.
From October through December 2024, “more than 27,000 refugees were admitted to the United States, 2,241 of whom were resettled by World Relief in collaboration with local church partners across the country,” the organization said in a statement, noting that nearly 70% of those resettled refugees fled a threat of persecution in five countries: Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar, Syria and Venezuela.
The International Rescue Committee, a high-profile nonprofit refugee assistance group, called the decision “a step backwards.”
“This country has been a leader in refugee resettlement,” the committee’s president and CEO, David Miliband, said. “The refugee resettlement program is a proven, orderly, cost-effective way of offering life-saving protection to some of the most vulnerable people in the world.”
Afghans at risk
The suspension of the program leaves tens of thousands of Afghan refugees at risk, many of whom have already been vetted by the U.S., advocacy groups say.
“It’s unconscionable to abandon them,” said Shawn VanDiver, president of #AfghanEvac, a coalition of U.S. veterans and advocacy groups, noting that many of those remaining in Afghanistan are at great risk there.
“It sends a message to our allies around the world that we’re with you until it’s inconvenient, or with you until our administration changes,” he said. “They need to be able to trust the word that our diplomats and our service members give to them.”
The change does not affect the Special Immigrant Visa program, a separate immigration pathway for Afghans who have worked for the U.S. government or military, including the tens of thousands who have served as translators for the U.S. military since 2001.
Afghans who served in the Afghan military or who campaigned for human rights, but did not work directly for the U.S. military or embassy, are not eligible for the special immigrant visas and have to apply through the refugee program.
The Taliban has targeted Afghans who served in the Afghan government and security forces, as well as journalists and civil society activists, beating, detaining and killing an unknown number, according to human rights organizations and the United Nations.
The U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan has documented evidence of the Taliban committing extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and torture against specific groups, including media workers, human rights defenders and people affiliated with the former government.
An Afghan woman resettled in the U.S. told NBC News that her parents were supposed to be on a January 30 flight from Afghanistan to the United States, but she did not know whether the flight would go ahead. The family has not yet heard from the State Department about the planned flight.
“We are so worried especially for my dad because he is hiding for three years. It is so hard for my family,” said the woman, who spoke on the condition that her name not be used due to what she said are threats from the Taliban against her father, who served in the Afghan police and worked closely with the U.S. government before the Taliban came into power in 2021.
In his first message to the U.S. diplomatic corps, Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent a State Department-wide memo setting priorities in line with the second Trump administration, including, “Curbing Mass Migration and Securing Our Borders.”
“The era of mass migration must end. This Department will no longer undertake any activities that facilitate or encourage it,” Rubio wrote in the note obtained by NBC News. “And diplomacy with other nations, especially in the Western Hemisphere, will prioritize securing America’s borders, stopping illegal and destabilizing migration, and negotiating the repatriation of illegal immigrants.”
But the administration’s priorities on refugees may be at odds with some of its supporters. Earlier this month, before Monday’s inauguration, several evangelical Christian organizations urged Trump to maintain the refugee program to ensure Christians facing persecution abroad can find safety in the United States.
“We are grateful for President-elect Trump’s commitment to ensuring that our nation’s borders are strong and secure. We also appreciate and affirm his recent call to ensure systems so that immigrants ‘with love for the country’ are able ‘to come in legally,’” the Christian groups said in a Jan. 14 statement.
Trump has received strong support from evangelical voters, including in his election victory in November, and has promised to protect Christians from what he has portrayed as discrimination in American society.
Out of the roughly 100,000 refugees admitted to the United States last year, nearly 30,000 were Christians from countries accused of persecuting the Christian community, according to the nonprofit Open Doors.
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