How the Trump Administration Is Dismantling Refugee and Asylum Programs

Trump administration officials are severely limiting U.S. humanitarian refugee and asylum programs that were established by law and embody values that date back to our nation’s earliest days. In addition to becoming a central part of the American story, the generations of people seeking safety in America have enriched the country economically.

Even before its founding, refugees like the Puritans have been coming to what would become the United States to escape persecution, but the official refugee program expanded after World War II. Protections for Jews and other minorities persecuted during the Holocaust were severely limited due to quotas that had been on the books since the 1920s, leading to incidents like the U.S. government’s decision to turn away Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany on the ship St. Louis, over a quarter of whom ultimately perished in the Holocaust.

President Harry Truman issued a directive in 1945 that was the first in a series of executive and legislative actions that led to the acceptance of more than 350,000 refugees displaced by the war. Over the next few decades, a series of laws were passed to accept refugees from specified countries, most notably Cubans fleeing the Fidel Castro–led revolution.

In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act that eliminated country quotas. Three years later, in 1968, the U.S. signed on to the international Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, which defined the term “refugee” and outlined refugees’ legal rights. Subsequent waves of refugees included more than 100,000 refugees from Southeast Asia after the Vietnam War and hundreds of thousands more Cubans.

The Refugee Act of 1980 formalized the refugee program, officially adopting the United Nations’ refugee definition, allowing the president to set the annual number of refugee admissions in consultation with Congress, and establishing a statutory basis for asylum. Those refugee and asylum frameworks remain in place today.

Since 1980, the number of refugees admitted annually has ranged from more than 207,000 in 1980 to a low of just over 11,000 in 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic. Since 1990, asylum approvals have ranged from just over 5,000 in 1991 to a record high of more than 54,000 in 2023, the most recent year for which data is available.

In addition to Cubans welcomed into the United States during the revolution and reign of Castro, the humanitarian programs also protected scientist Albert Einstein, who fled from the Nazis, and Madeleine Albright, who escaped communism in Czechoslovakia and eventually became U.S. secretary of state. More recently, the program has protected defectors from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Afghan nationals who supported U.S.-coalition forces during the war there, and women and children fleeing severe domestic abuse and rape.

Americans across the political spectrum strongly support the country’s historic commitment to welcoming the persecuted. Two thirds of Americans oppose suspending all asylum applications from people coming to the United State to escape violence or danger, and nearly 7 in 10 Americans support having a refugee program.

Yet the Trump administration is deeply cutting these humanitarian programs. The ostensible reason is to protect the country, but asylees and refugees must undergo thorough application processes, including screening and vetting.

The breadth and scale of the administration’s cuts to the asylum and refugee programs are unprecedented. As a candidate, Trump claimed there was chaos at the border, but by the time he took office, crossings were lower than at the end of his first term. Even so, on Inauguration Day in 2025, the president said an “invasion” at the southern border justified extreme steps. He indefinitely shut the border to asylum seekers and signed an executive order freezing all refugee processing. In October 2025, he restarted the refugee program with a historically low annual cap of 7,500 refugees, prioritizing white Afrikaners from South Africa. Of the 4,499 refugees admitted by this administration before April 2026 (the most recent data available), 99.9 percent were white South Africans. Even with an additional 10,000 slots added in May of 2026 for Afrikaners, that is a dramatic decrease from the 125,000-person cap President Biden had set for fiscal year 2026.

On November 21, 2025, the administration also began requiring a new review and potential re-interview of each of the 200,000 refugees admitted during the Biden administration, suspending applications of refugees who were seeking permanent status during that same period.

The administration further ramped up its efforts to restrict humanitarian programs after an Afghan man, granted asylum in the United States for assisting American troops abroad, shot two National Guard soldiers, killing Specialist Sarah Beckstrom. The Department of Homeland Security indefinitely halted adjudication of all pending asylum applications, regardless of country of nationality or type of claim and announced it would restrict work authorization for asylum seekers. A federal judge ordered the government to start considering asylum and employment applications again, noting that whereas applicants had followed the law, the administration had violated the law it is supposed to administer. The government has appealed. The department also reopened the cases of refugees in Minnesota as part of a broader effort targeting the state and declared it would arrest and detain refugees lawfully in the country who do not have a green card.

These moves undermine protections for vulnerable migrants, block American employers from hiring needed personnel, and prevent applicants from supporting themselves while they wait for the government to decide their cases — a process that can take multiple years.

Refugees and asylum seekers must meet similar — and strict — legal requirements to qualify for protection. The legal definition of “refugee” requires applicants for asylum and refugee status to establish they were persecuted or have a well-founded fear of persecution on account of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. Many of the legal terms are ambiguous, and each legal test requires explanation and evidence. Even if applicants satisfy the legal standards, they can be denied refugee or asylum status for other reasons, such as if they provided “material support” to terrorists or if another country allowed them to resettle there.

Despite the common legal requirements, there are distinct procedures for refugee and asylum applicants. Refugees apply from outside the United States — almost always after leaving their home countries to live in refugee camps — through organizations such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which screens them and refers those who meet basic criteria to the U.S. government. The government process includes an interview, medical examination, and periodic screening and vetting while the case is pending.

Asylum, on the other hand, is available by law to any immigrant in the United States, even if they do not present themselves at a designated port of entry. Those who go to the border are screened by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers before they are permitted to enter the country, although the Supreme Court just issued a decision that effectively allows the government to deny asylum processing at the border. In addition to meeting the legal definition of refugee, asylum seekers must apply within one year of their arrival in the United States.

If an asylum applicant clears those hurdles, the government official considering the application — an asylum officer or immigration judge, depending on how they entered the country — can still deny it if there are negative factors in the person’s background, such as a misdemeanor offense, that outweigh the positive factors in the case. Positive factors include length of residence in the country or the presence of family members who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents. Under long-standing case law, the danger of persecution outweighed all but the most egregious adverse factors although in an opinion that is likely to be appealed, an administrative court at the Department of Justice issued a binding opinion in late June that adds a new factor judges can use to deny asylum.

Under international law, applicants denied asylum may apply for other forms of protection — either withholding or deferral of removal — but those protections require applicants to meet a higher legal threshold, do not lead to permanent status in the United States, and can lead to deportation to a country where the immigrant has no ties.

After an applicant clears the legal hurdles for asylum or refugee status, the government conducts extensive vetting to determine whether the individual poses a public safety or national security risk. (This is standard practice even though immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than American-born citizens.) Applicants submit fingerprints and complete detailed applications that collect phone numbers, addresses, criminal history, information about family members, residences, schools attended, and photographs. Applicants sign the form under oath and are subject to criminal prosecution — as well as denial of their applications — if they don’t tell the truth.

DHS runs the information and fingerprints through several databases, both classified and unclassified, to search against millions of records. The databases pull from international and national sources, including the FBI, the Terrorist Screening Center, the National Targeting Center, the Department of Defense, DHS, the Social Security Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, and INTERPOL. Security checks are run repeatedly, both at the time of application and periodically while the application is pending, pursuant to a DHS Inspector General recommendation.

Banning refugees and asylees has a detrimental impact on the U.S. economy. Studies conducted during both the Trump and Biden administrations found that refugees and asylees have contributed tens of billions of dollars to the economy by working and paying taxes. Individual workers also benefit. Recent analysis found the influx of asylum seekers after 2021 drove up employment for people already in the country and raised their wages.

The administration also has plenty of money to resume processing refugee and asylum cases. In July 2025, Congress supplemented DHS’s annual appropriations with a record $170 billion for border and interior enforcement and added an additional $70 billion in June 2026. DHS has until September 2029 to spend the $240 billion. Although some of the funds are earmarked for specific purposes, like $47 billion for a border wall, DHS still has plenty of money to process humanitarian applications, even in large numbers. And the department could get to a faster result by implementing the asylum officer rule, which although imperfect, established a process to reach final decisions in most cases in six months or less. At the time the rule was enacted, DHS did not have sufficient funding — an estimated maximum of $1 billion each year to process 300,000 applications — but DHS is now flush.

Congress also gave the State Department billions of dollars for the 2026 fiscal year for foreign assistance and related programs, including refugee processing. Instead of pilfering humanitarian dollars to fund “self-deportations” at DHS, the State Department should use its budget to admit the more than 100,000 approved and vetted refugees who have been stranded since Trump’s second inauguration.

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Americans remain committed to welcoming people seeking refuge, and the country benefits from having them here. The administration should take notice and reverse its policies of excluding and punishing those who most need protection.