Since Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office in January 2025, nativist and racist sentiments toward refugees and asylum seekers have shifted from the right-wing fringe into the political mainstream. The current policy marks the most significant change in humanitarian migration governance since the Refugee Act of 1980, yet its underlying This blog post demonstrates that protection on humanitarian grounds in the U.S. has always been conditional: where earlier admission claims were grounded in anti-communist rhetoric, current policy is steeped in a white-supremacist ideology that even surpasses long-standing racialized logics embedded in refugee policy since its inception.
The U.S. refugee system emerged in the aftermath of World War II and ever since has alternated between a moral commitment based on universal principles of protection, deservingness, and support and, conversely, on nativist, xenophobic, and racist restrictions in response to domestic social and economic tensions as well as ideological, foreign policy, and geopolitical interests. During the Cold War, fleeing communist regimes proved legitimate for ad hoc asylum for refugee groups from Hungary, Cuba, and Vietnam, whereas escaping other forms of persecution did largely not. This ideological bias only changed in the wake of the Vietnam War, when thousands of parolees arrived in the U.S., underscoring the need for a comprehensive and systematic refugee policy.
Accordingly, in 1980, Congress passed the Refugee Act and provided the legal framework for the standardized U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), through which more than three million refugees have since been resettled in the U.S. Under this framework, the president proposes an annual refugee admission ceiling aligned with national and political priorities. These decisions, however, still respond to geopolitical dynamics, such as in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when all admissions were immediately halted and, in the aftermath, disproportionately barred Arabic speakers and nationals of Muslim-majority countries due to heightened security concerns. Similarly, President Obama raised the long-standing ceiling from 70,000 to 85,000 in 2016 and to 110,000 in 2017 to admit additional Syrian refugees.
Even though the anti-communist rationale no longer guides refugee admissions, the scale and scope of admissions remain deeply embedded in the political convictions of the president-elect, resulting in often contradictory and discretionary admission practices, despite the universal humanitarian claim. Against this backdrop, the present backlash is not entirely without precedent in its effort to curtail refugee admissions; the magnitude of the current retrenchment, however, exceeds anything attempted by previous presidents and has far‑reaching consequences that are still unfolding.
Dismantling the refugee program while whitening protection
The Immigration Policy Tracking Project, compiled by law professor Lucas Guttentag together with law students and immigration law experts, documents every immigration-related policy of Trump’s second administration. As of August 2026, it lists These policy actions overwhelmingly restrict migrants and refugees’ access to status, protection, resources, and basic rights.
One of Trump’s first actions targeted the admission ceiling for refugees, lowering the cap for 2026 from 125,000 to a historic low of 7,500 refugees, effectively bringing large parts of the resettlement program to a standstill. Many refugees who had already been screened and vetted, and were awaiting final travel, remain stuck in their countries of origin or in third countries, trapped in a legal limbo with no safe place to go or return to. Along with these admission cuts, refugee resettlement agencies in the U.S., which largely assist newly arriving refugees during their first three months with material support such as food, clothing, and furniture, temporary housing, access to healthcare, and other public services, came equally under attack. Disguised as “wasteful government programs,” agencies were required to freeze their services, lost their federal funding, and, due to limited financial resources, had to lay off staff workers. These measures not only affected the immediate needs of refugees but also caused long-term damage to the entire support infrastructure of refugee resettlement.
Even more controversial proved Trump’s Executive Order 14204 of February 2025. In line with the broader societal shift toward pro-whiteness, the order explicitly directs the Departments of State and Homeland Security to prioritize white South Africans, Afrikaners, for resettlement in the U.S. Grounded in a “white genocide” narrative that attributes persecution to affirmative action policies known as Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) and to land reforms that would presumably discriminate against Afrikaners, who nonetheless still own the vast majority of individually held farmland, the Trump administration granted them expedient resettlement and a “rapid pathway to Citizenship.” Accordingly, between October 2025 and April 2026, 6,066 Afrikaners were resettled across 48 states, primarily in Texas, Florida, and California, compared with only three Afghan nationals, who were also admitted. Shortly thereafter, in May 2026, the administration further expanded the program to admit another 10,000 Afrikaners, thus raising the annual refugee ceiling to 17,500 explicitly for this group.
This overt racial preference for white Afrikaners exceeds the racialization already inherent in refugee admission, which routinely excludes Black and Brown refugees. This time, however, a specific white group was singled out and prioritized, whose claims of persecution above all serve political rather than humanitarian needs. The hollowing out of the refugee program became further apparent when news reported that several Afrikaner “refugees” were considering or had already returned to South Africa after experiencing initial hardships in their new locations. Such voluntary returns to a country with ostensibly life-threatening persecution call into question the credibility of their resettlement claim, barely concealing the preferences given on racial and political grounds.
Once protected, now deportable: the liminality of the temporary protected status
The current administration’s anti-immigration crusade extends also into the domestic sphere, targeting refugees who have already been legally resettled, and migrants who have been granted some form of temporary humanitarian protection. The most common of these liminal statuses in use is the Temporary Protected Status (TPS), created by Congress in 1990, which allows for an immediate response to humanitarian needs caused by ongoing armed conflict, environmental disaster, or other extraordinary conditions. Potential TPS holders need to live already in the U.S. to qualify for this time-limited protection, and are then shielded from deportation, and granted the right to live and work legally in the U.S. for the duration of their designation. The Biden administration significantly expanded the program by granting TPS to people from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Ukraine, and Venezuela, exceeding the total number of TPS holders to roughly 1.3 million from 17 countries by March 2025.
While these temporary protection programs have been far more responsive, and above all, faster to grant protection to people in need, compared to the overburdened asylum and refugee system, their temporality is simultaneously their greatest pitfall. Once the political climate changes, these programs fall prey to discretionary decisions that revoke or simply fail to renew the temporary status. Not surprisingly, the Trump administration began in January 2025, to overturn former protection from at least 13 countries, including Honduras, Cameroon, Afghanistan, and others, affecting over one million people. For other groups, the administration has declined to extend the designation, which will expire shortly, as in the case of Ukrainians who will lose their status on October 19, 2026. While immigration lawyers challenge many of these actions in courts and some termination is paused by judicial order such as in the case for Syria, it creates nonetheless a legal limbo and profound uncertainty. The Supreme Court ruling is expected later this year, and, if the Court rules in favor of the administration, it will end protections for Syrians, Haitians, and potentially others in quick succession, with far-reaching consequences for the program as such. As most TPS holders cannot safely return to their countries of origin due to prolonged crises, they will, in practice, most likely remain in the U.S. However, stripped of their legal protection, they will become in many cases undocumented, facing a heightened risk of detention and deportation, if, for example, stopped at routine traffic stops or in immigration raids. The transition from protected to “unlawful presence” immediately reshapes people’s lives, work prospects, sense of belonging, and ultimately their safety, revealing the scope of ad hoc and at will political decisions. Moreover, it raises fundamental questions about the nature of protection as a durable right or a revocable administrative grant.
Following the present nativist logic, in November 2025, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued a directive mandating a thorough review and potential re-interview of all refugees admitted between January 20, 2021, and February 20, 2025–the period of the Biden administration–with the possibility of terminating the refugee status if criteria are not met. The memo barely veils any nativist and racial sentiments to justify the potential revocation of the protection of more than 235,000 vetted refugees, citing security concerns and accusing the Biden administration of prioritizing “expediency” and “quantity” over rigorous screening. A claim that contradicts the crude reality of refugee resettlement. Refugees typically undergo intensive security screenings, including biographic and biometric checks, medical screenings, forensic document testing, and in-person interviews conducted by multiple U.S. government authorities before they are ever approved for resettlement. A process that can last up to 36 months. The refugees targeted by the review are predominantly from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Syria, and Burma, countries that Trump has simultaneously subjected to travel bans on racialized and religious grounds. At the same time, the directive froze all pending green card applications, even though refugees are required to apply to adjust their status to lawful permanent residence within one year of admission.
A few months later, in January 2026, USCIS announced the operational launch of the Post-Admission Refugee Reverification and Integrity Strengthening (PARRIS) operation, targeting Minnesota as a first testing ground for implementing the policy. At the time, the larger metropolitan area of Minneapolis/St. Paul, as a longstanding home to a large and visible refugee community, was in the midst of the large-scale raid “Operation Metro Surge” by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The ICE presence on the ground facilitated the door-to-door arrests and detention of the refugees in question, who were then flown to Texas for the re-investigation of their cases. While refugee advocates, legal organizations, and community groups quickly challenged the raids, documenting arrests of lawfully present refugees, filing emergency lawsuits, and ultimately securing court orders that partially halted or constrained the operation, the combined actions of PARRIS and Operation Metro Surge produced widespread fear, a profound erosion of trust in U.S. refugee protections, and legal ambiguity. Beyond the immediate legal and material harm, the full scope of the trauma, anxiety, and despair experienced by families and their children who were policed, separated, and detained will have an even longer impact on Minnesota’s refugee communities and beyond. The full consequences and potential impact on daily life, education, discourses on safety and violence, immigration and refugee policies, among other issues, will be far-reaching and cannot even be fully comprehended for some time to come.
Conclusion: protection undone
The current large-scale assault on the refugee system leaves little doubt about the nativist and racist agenda of the current administration. Although policies and practices that exclude, police, detain, and deport people rendered foreign have long been a recurring feature, the present scope and scale of dismantling the infrastructure of humanitarian migration marks a qualitatively new dimension. Protection is no longer a durable right, but rather a discretionary grant conditioned on whiteness. In line with the Trump administration’s vision of an exclusionary “America First” as a white, Christian nation-state, borders and interiors alike are sealed against Black, Brown, and Muslim people seeking refuge. Deemed racially threatening, their voices are silenced, their bodies criminalized and, ultimately, rendered deportable. America has, thus, closed its doors to non-white forced migrants.