Trump Stops Refugee Admissions Indefinitely

In one of his first acts as president, Donald Trump signed an executive order stopping indefinitely all refugee admissions into the United States. Refugee groups are “heartbroken” for the impact the order will have on victims of persecution waiting years to enter America. In theory, the halt to admissions could end after a review, but many analysts are skeptical.

The Executive Order On Refugees

On January 20, 2025, Donald Trump issued an executive order that announced: “I therefore direct that entry into the United States of refugees under the USRAP [U.S. Refugee Admissions Program] be suspended . . . until a finding is made in accordance with section 4 of this order.” The only exception: “The Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security may jointly determine to admit aliens to the United States as refugees on a case-by-case basis, in their discretion, but only so long as they determine that the entry of such aliens as refugees is in the national interest and does not pose a threat to the security or welfare of the United States.”

Refugee groups expressed concern for the many lives likely affected by the order. “It’s heartbreaking because the refugee program isn’t just a humanitarian lifeline through which the U.S. upholds its global leadership. It also represents the gold standard of legal immigration pathways in terms of security screening, community coordination and mutual economic benefit,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge.

“It is in America’s national security, foreign policy and economic interests to welcome refugees and it can be done without harming national security,” concluded Elizabeth Neumann, former assistant secretary for counterterrorism and threat prevention at the Department of Homeland Security, in a National Foundation for American Policy report. “Over the last two decades, security and law enforcement professionals at all levels have worked to establish, improve and utilize robust security and vetting procedures for individuals admitted as refugees to the United States. These policies and procedures have been reviewed, enhanced and strengthened repeatedly.”

Mark Regets, an NFAP senior fellow and formerly an economist at the National Science Foundation, examined more than 30 years of data. He concluded refugees start with lower earnings but, on average, over the next 10 years, have far higher real earnings growth than other workers: 70% for refugees vs. 25% for the U.S.-born. (Real earnings are income adjusted for inflation.) He also found refugees have low rates of incarceration and, over time, significantly increase their education level.

Matthew Soerens, vice president of advocacy & policy at World Relief, a global Christian humanitarian organization, said refugees blocked by the executive order include a large number who were persecuted on account of their Christian faith. He notes about 30% of the 100,000 refugees resettled in FY 2024 were “Christians from the countries where religious watchdog group Open Doors says that Christians face the most severe persecution in the world.”

“As we noted in the statement with other Christian leaders, President Trump has repeatedly affirmed that he believes in legal immigration and that he will defend persecuted Christians—the resettlement program checks both boxes, and I hope he’ll recognize that many of his voters value it and want it resumed as soon as possible,” said Soerens.

The order will also affect allies who risked their lives to help America in Afghanistan. “An executive order signed by President Trump on Monday that suspends refugee admissions to the United States puts at risk thousands of citizens of Afghanistan who helped the American mission during the war there, the president of a California-based resettlement group said,” reported the New York Times. “The order would affect not only scores of Afghans who are now in hiding from the Taliban’s repressive rule, but also family members of active-duty U.S. troops, said Shawn VanDiver, the president of AfghanEvac.”

Soerens points out a flaw in the reasoning behind the executive order. “The executive order cites concerns about particular communities—Springfield, Ohio, Whitewater, Wisconsin, Chicago and Denver, etc.—facing challenges as a result of ‘significant influxes of migrants’—but it’s notable that the migrants who arrived in significant numbers to those communities were actually not resettled as refugees. They were Haitians, Venezuelans and others whom the Biden administration allowed to be lawfully in the country because they were fleeing crises similar to those that formal refugees have fled.”

Soerens notes that people admitted formally as refugees “have the support of the U.S. refugee resettlement program, the longstanding support system that relies upon faith-based organizations, local churches and lots of community support to ensure that refugees can integrate well into new communities and that they’re distributed across the nation.”

Bernard Kamungo lived in the Nyarugusu Refugee Camp in Tanzania for 14 years. He did not have access to electronic games, so he played soccer by “wrapping cloth around inflated condoms and medical gloves” to make a ball. In 2016, the International Rescue Committee placed his family in Abilene, Texas. His parents had lived in the refugee camp for 20 years in a small home without plumbing or electricity. In the United States, Kamungo become a professional soccer player for FC Dallas and a member of the U.S. national team. “Having somewhere I can call home, it was always my dream,” said Kamungo. “It was always what everyone who leaves a refugee camp dreams about.”

When The Refugee Suspension Might End

In theory, the executive order contains a mechanism to end the suspension. “The language of the executive order leaves the door open for a suspension ranging from 90 days to indefinitely,” said Vignarajah of Global Refuge. “It requires a report to be submitted to the President within 90 days, after which the program may or may not be resumed.”

Trump’s “Homeland Security Advisor” is Stephen Miller, an opponent of refugee admissions and the likely author of the executive order suspending the refugee program. “Within 90 days of this order, the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of State, shall submit a report to the president through the Homeland Security Advisor regarding whether resumption of entry of refugees into the United States under the USRAP would be in the interests of the United States,” according to the executive order. “The Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of State, shall submit further reports every 90 days thereafter until I determine that resumption of the USRAP is in the interests of the United States.” (Emphasis added.)

The president has the authority to set refugee admission levels and institute other policies to restrict their admission. In Trump’s first term, the administration prevented almost 300,000 refugees from coming to America. Stephen Miller, at the time White House senior adviser, fought to suspend refugee admissions and reduce them to the historically low annual refugee admission ceiling of 18,000 for FY 2020, which was 84% lower than the 110,000-limit set in the last year of the Obama administration.

In the book Border Wars: Inside Trump’s Assault on Immigration, New York Times journalists Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael D. Shear describe how Miller pushed out career people and worked the system to get the refugee ceiling down to 30,000 for FY 2019 after facing resistance during his first year in the White House. Miller blocked the release of a Health and Human Services report that found the net economic impact of resettling refugees in the United States was overwhelmingly positive.

In FY 2021, after working for years with refugee resettlement agencies decimated during the Trump administration, Biden officials surpassed 100,000 refugee admissions. That is not a number likely to be seen again for a long time. Under the terms of the executive order, refugee admissions could resume in several months. It is also possible no refugees will set foot on American soil so long as Donald Trump is president.