Reports: Refugee Program Would Again Favor a Single Group

The reported plan would dedicate 17,500 admissions slots, primarily to resettling a single nationality, as thousands of other vetted refugees remain effectively shut out of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 22, 2026

Contact: Timothy Young | timothy[dot]young at globalrefuge[dot]org

WASHINGTON – Global Refuge, one of the nation’s largest refugee resettlement nonprofits, is responding to reports published today by CNN and CBS News that the Trump administration intends to admit up to 17,500 refugees, with slots primarily reserved for White South African Afrikaners, over the coming fiscal year, at a projected cost of $500 million.

If accurate, this reported plan would double down on the course set this fiscal year, in which all but three of the 12,904 people admitted as refugees came from South Africa — setting up another year of the program narrowed to a single nationality. As recently as Fiscal Year 2024, the United States welcomed more than 100,000 refugees from 85 countries.

“A refugee program that centers one group and sidelines all others is an abdication of our global humanitarian leadership and an abandonment of thousands of vulnerable families who put their faith in our country,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, President and CEO of Global Refuge. “Behind that closed door stands everyone this country once promised to protect: the Afghan interpreter, the persecuted pastor, the mother fleeing a war zone who once had reason to believe America would keep its promise.”

Global Refuge is urging the administration to restore the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program to its longstanding grounding in humanitarian need, to protect the refugees already rebuilding their lives here, and to conduct meaningful consultation with Congress, as required by the Refugee Act, before any number is set, or population prioritized.

“We’re simply asking for a refugee program that obeys the law and answers to humanitarian need, the way it has under presidents of both parties for nearly half a century,” said Vignarajah. “What’s being dismantled took decades to build. It represents a bipartisan commitment this country made to the world, and to itself, about the kind of nation we intended to be. This determination is critical because it will tell the world who we still believe is worth protecting, including the most vulnerable children and whose lives depend on our answer.”

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