The Trump administration is drastically cutting the number of refugees it will admit to the United States, rejecting thousands of people fleeing war and persecution while reserving the record-low number of slots for mostly white Afrikaner South Africans.
The administration lowered the ceiling of refugee admissions to just 7,500 for the fiscal year that started this month, down from the cap of 125,000 set by the Biden administration last year, according to a notice in the Federal Register posted on Thursday.
The notice made plans official that had been in the works for months. They overhaul a program that for decades made the U.S. a sanctuary from persecution and turn it into one that gives preference to English speakers and white people overseas whom Mr. Trump has pledged to protect.
Mr. Trump took steps to gut the refugee program on the first day of his second term, when he suspended refugee admissions. He then created a carve-out for South African descendants of Dutch and French settlers who arrived there in the 17th century, even as families hoping to escape war in Sudan, Iranian religious minorities previously approved to travel to the United States and people in refugee camps around the world remained in limbo.
Mr. Trump has claimed that Afrikaners face racial persecution at home, a claim disputed by government officials in South Africa. Police statistics do not show that white people are more vulnerable to violent crime than other people in South Africa. Black South Africans continue to lag behind white South Africans by virtually every economic measure.
The New York Times first reported that Mr. Trump had signed a determination to lower the ceiling of refugee admissions to a record low level earlier this month. At the time, the administration said it would make the determination official only after it had consulted with Congress, as it is required to do by law each year. But White House officials maintained that consultation would occur after the government shutdown had ended.
The Trump administration, however, made the refugee determination official on Thursday, without consulting with the required congressional committees, according to congressional officials. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
In the federal notice, the administration said the refugee cap of 7,500 was justified by “humanitarian concerns” and was in the “national interest.”
“The admissions numbers shall primarily be allocated among Afrikaners from South Africa,” according to the notice, “and other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination in their respective homelands.”
The White House has previously argued that the United States does not have the resources to absorb refugees after a record number of migrants entered the country through the U.S.-Mexico border during the Biden administration.
The decision was met with intense backlash by refugee advocates.
“This decision doesn’t just lower the refugee admissions ceiling. It lowers our moral standing,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president of Global Refuge, a refugee resettlement organization. “For more than four decades, the U.S. refugee program has been a lifeline.”
She added: “Concentrating the vast majority of admissions on one group undermines the program’s purpose, as well as its credibility.”
Last week, Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, pressed Mr. Trump’s nominee for ambassador to South Africa about the direction of the refugee program.
“Do you support having a refugee admissions policy in this country that only admits white refugees?” Mr. Murphy asked L. Brent Bozell III, Mr. Trump’s nominee.
Mr. Bozell said he was not responsible for designing the policy. “I am here to serve America and to do what the president is asking me to do,” he said.
When Mr. Trump suspended refugee admissions on his first day in office, he ordered federal agencies to present him with plans for the future of the refugee program. The proposals included prioritizing white South Africans, as well as Europeans who have been “targeted for peaceful expression of views online such as opposition to mass migration or support for ‘populist’ political parties.”
While the notice posted on Thursday says that a majority of the remaining slots will be reserved for white South Africans, it also leaves openings for those the administration deems worthy of refugee status. A senior administration official said the U.S. government was still actively monitoring Europe to identify those who could be brought over as refugees.
During the first year of his second term, Mr. Trump has made good on a campaign pledge to curtail immigration to the United States. He has cut illegal crossings of migrants seeking work and asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border to record lows.
But the refugee program is separate from the asylum system at the border. Applicants for the refugee program often must wait years in camps overseas before coming to the United States. They must pass extensive background checks and undergo interviews and medical exams before they are welcomed to the country.
“It is egregious to exclude refugees who completed years of rigorous security checks and are currently stuck in dangerous and precarious situations,” said Sharif Aly, the president of the International Refugee Assistance Project. “America’s refugee program was built to reflect our values, and the thousands of individuals we’ve closed our doors to represent thousands of missed opportunities of people who could have strengthened a local community or economy.”
Zolan Kanno-Youngs is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
Hamed Aleaziz covers the Department of Homeland Security and immigration policy for The Times.
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