The Trump administration has set a cap of just 7,500 refugee admissions for 2026, a 94% reduction from the Biden administration’s 125,000-person target, according to a Presidential Determination published Oct. 31 in the Federal Register. A new report from UCLA’s Williams Institute warns the cuts will disproportionately harm LGBTQ refugees worldwide.
At least 62 countries currently maintain laws criminalizing consensual same-sex activity. Thousands of vulnerable individuals face extended waits in dangerous transit countries, according to the report.
LGBTQ refugees encounter unique obstacles under the reduced cap. Many are single adults who fled family persecution and lack reunification pathways that prioritize other refugees. Officials sometimes fail to recognize persecution based on sexual orientation or gender identity, while refugees may fear disclosing their status. Extended waits create economic vulnerability, forcing many into exploitative work situations.
“The lack of reliable data on LGBTQI+ refugees makes the impact of this new cap even harder to measure,” Ari Shaw, director of international programs at the Williams Institute, said in a news release. “Without accurate data, policymakers and service providers cannot fully assess or respond to the needs of LGBTQI+ refugees.”
The Trump administration has not yet appointed a special envoy for LGBTQ rights, eliminating a key referral pathway established under Biden for at-risk individuals, according to the report.
President Donald Trump’s second term has especially targeted two groups in particular: immigrants and LGBTQ people. On his first day in office, he ended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, which left thousands of refugees who had already been approved to live in the United States stranded. He also drastically lowered the cap on the number of refugees allowed to enter the U.S. from 125,000 to 7,500. Thankfully, Immigration Equality is here to help.
“For many decades, we’ve seen clients arrive with nothing but hope and fear, and walk out with safety and freedom,” Anto Chavez, Immigration Equality’s communications director, told LGBTQ Nation. “It’s just becoming harder to fight, but we’re still here with them. We still hold their hand every step of the way. We have more than 700 active legal cases, our legal staff trains thousands of lawyers nationwide to represent queer immigrants pro bono, and we fight in the courts and Congress to expand protections.”
Founded in 1994, Immigration Equality provides free legal help for immigrants and asylum seekers who are LGBTQ+ or HIV-positive. The group is fighting Trump’s seemingly arbitrary executive orders on immigration in courts — and winning.
Chavez spoke with LGBTQ Nation about how the sociocultural landscape around immigration has changed now that Trump is back in office and what average citizens can do to fight for the rights of queer immigrants in our community.
For forever, immigrant communities have learned how to take care of each other without relying on systems that have failed us. We have to continue to do that. We have to continue to fight. Anto Chavez, Immigration Equality communications director
LGBTQ Nation: What has changed under Trump’s second term for immigrants applying for asylum to escape anti-LGBTQ persecution in their home countries?
Anto Chavez: The anti-immigrant rhetoric has shaped the culture and the cultural shift in our country; this happened during Trump’s term as well. But it really changes how queer immigrants even envision themselves in the U.S.
At the beginning of this administration, some of our clients were refugees. We have an asylum program and a refugee program. Historically, we have worked with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), but we opened up our refugee program a few years ago. After we launched it, some folks were really scared to even just decide to come to the U.S. I think there was a lot of misinformation, [but] this is still a place that’s safer for many folks.
But when it comes to policy — I mean, if we talk about refugee work, every avenue has been blocked for us. The refugee resettlement program went from thousands a year to zero, and so we’ve had to really look into other options.
How has Donald Trump’s executive order drastically lowering the refugee cap affected refugees who were already approved?
Since January 20, after the executive order suspending the refugee resettlement program and halting the process for many folks, we had people who were ready to travel and had to cancel. So for queer and trans asylum seekers, this means just fewer pathways for relocation or protection from persecution.
The U.S. has historically been a place where queer immigrants have been able to come and live freely. It’s scary to think it’s starting to change.
There are increased barriers for asylum seekers who are already here as well. Policies like what was called “Remain in Mexico,” were reinstated. The CBP (Customs and Border Patrol) One app, which allowed those migrating for humanitarian reasons to schedule asylum interviews at ports of entry, was ended, and existing appointments were canceled.
There has been increased deportation, including of multiple LGBTQ asylum seekers. There’s also the abuse that happens in detention, particularly to queer and trans immigrants. It’s just out of this world. We have some reports that queer immigrants are more likely to be assaulted and abused in ICE detention and put into solitary confinement.
LGBTQ Nation spoke with Rainbow Railroad, an international not-for-profit organization that helps LGBTQ+ people escape state-sponsored violence, and two refugees that the group has helped to better understand the plight of queer asylum seekers looking to settle in the United States amid the president’s xenophobic attacks on immigrants.
It was a bracingly cold night a year ago last December when Javi (not his real name) found himself exiting the jetway at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. After a five-hour flight from the Salvadoran capital of San Salvador, he literally had no idea where he was going.
Described by those who know him as a good-looking guy — about 5’9″, with dark hair and a beautiful smile — Javi, 30, grew up in a small town in El Salvador among a religious and “very conservative” family, including an uncle who had a problem with him.
“He said, ‘I’m gonna kill you, because in my family, it’s not allowed to have a fa**ot,’” Javi recounted well enough in English, his second language.
His uncle was a cop assigned to El Salvador’s Supreme Court.
“The police in El Salvador are very, very corrupt,” Javi explained. But when Javi shared the threat with his family, they did nothing to support him. They already suspected Javi’s uncle of shooting his brother in an incident the year before, and were powerless to help, even if they wanted to.
“My family never supported me because I’m gay,” Javi said.
There had been other threats when he was growing up, but this time was different, more overt.
Javi decided to leave. It was the first of several moves that took Javi around the country as terror gripped El Salvador under the authoritarian regime of President Nayib Bukele.
The charismatic leader, first elected in 2019 at the age of 38, unleashed police and the army across the country to address gang crime, sent troops into the legislature to force votes, and enabled his own indefinite reelection after ending a historic ban on consecutive presidential terms.
Despite aligning with the LGBTQ+ community early in his political career, Bukele broke a pledge supporting marriage equality and vowed to remove “all traces” of “gender ideologies in schools and colleges.” He purged workers from the government, promoting policies that were “incompatible” with his “patriotic and family values” agenda.
LGBTQ+ people were now officially under threat in El Salvador, in a terror campaign sanctioned by the government and carried out by foot soldiers like Javi’s uncle.
Paranoia ran rampant in the community. Javi saw suspicious men surveilling one building he lived in, “Secret Service agents or something like that.” Police and military officers appeared in the building’s hallways, taking photographs.
“That was not normal, having somebody in a mask for surveillance in your building,” he said.
People are forcibly displaced from their home, whether it’s for climate disaster reasons, or geopolitical crises, or in the case of LGBTQ+ people, it’s because of their identity or because of who they love, or because of who they are.Jamaican queer refugee, Latoya Nugent
Javi was detained on the way to lunch from work one day by a dozen police officers who accused him of stealing a phone. They asked, “‘Why are you shaking?’ Because I was very nervous. Why did they choose me to detain and not somebody else?”
When they saw his identification, “the narrative changed,” Javi said.
They said the town on his ID was a “dangerous place” and “then they accused me of being a gangster, not stealing the phone.”
“I was detained for like 45 minutes on the street while they were doing the investigation, and it was a horrible experience, because they hit me, and they threatened me, saying, ‘You are going to the jail,’ and this kind of stuff.”
They didn’t discover he was gay, Javi said. Whether or not they had, Javi could have been detained indefinitely under legislation passed by Bukele’s government, suspending due process in service of his anti-gang crusade.
“All of your constitutional rights are cut off, because that is the law now,” Javi said.
It’s one reason the Trump administration accepted Bukele’s offer earlier this year to house U.S. detainees in El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison.
Other incidents followed, Javi said: more masked officers sighted, neighbors screaming then suddenly silenced, cars and apartments inspected and photographed.
None of it “was normal,” Javi said.
Javi’s detention on the street two years ago ended with his release and a warning — and his own determination that life in El Salvador was no longer tenable for him.
Refugees may need a helping hand and support in the beginning, because they’re often relocating with limited or no resources. But the minute they get that support, they start to integrate, and they go on to live very self-sufficient lives and make significant contributions to their communities.Jamaican queer refugee, Latoya Nugent
Latoya Nugent came to the same conclusion in Jamaica three years ago.
“People do not become refugees by choice,” said the engagement director for Rainbow Railroad, a non-governmental organization (NGO) that helps relocate and resettle LGBTQ+ refugees in the United States and Canada.
Nugent spoke with the lilting accent she brought to Toronto in 2022.
“People are forcibly displaced from their home, whether it’s for climate disaster reasons, or geopolitical crises, or in the case of LGBTQ+ people, it’s because of their identity or because of who they love, or because of who they are, right?”
Nugent has watched with dismay as the second Trump administration shuts down refugee admissions to the United States.
Trump issued an executive order on his very first day in office suspending all refugee admissions to the U.S., and a presidential determination on September 30 lowered the ceiling on refugees from a cap of 125,000 set by the Biden administration last year to just 7,500 in 2025.
The downsized and refocused U.S. program will almost entirely benefit just one group of asylum seekers: white South Africans.
It’s a mindset “steeped in anti-immigrant sentiment and xenophobia,” Nugent said of Trump’s nativist immigration goals.
The idea that refugees are criminals waiting to prey on American “suckers”, to use a favored Trump description, or “just looking for handouts” in Nugent’s words, misses the point of refugee relocation and assistance, she says.
“Yes, I appreciate and I accept that refugees may need a helping hand and support in the beginning, because they’re often relocating with limited or no resources. But the minute they get that support, they start to integrate, and they go on to live very self-sufficient lives and make significant contributions to their communities,” she said.
Supporting refugees to the U.S. is an investment in communities, she says, not an invitation to do crime in them.
“I tell people — I mean, I’m very open about this, like, this has been my own experience, too. Yes, I live in Canada, but when I was forced to flee my home country, I needed support in the first few months to help me to restart and to rebuild. And this is what happens to a lot of LGBTQ+ refugees.”
It’s also the kind of assistance Rainbow Railroad is expanding after nearly 20 years helping them.
Named for the Underground Railroad of secret routes and safe houses that led fugitive slaves to freedom in the United States in the late 18th and 19th centuries, the NGO was founded in 2006 with a similar purpose: to help relocate LGBTQ+ people experiencing violence in their home countries to more affirming nations free from the same kinds of persecution.
The group has assisted nearly 40,000 individuals since their founding, including over 2200 refugees supported through emergency relocation assistance in crisis situations like the anti-gay purges in Chechnya in 2017 and 2018 and the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in 2021.
In 2024 alone, Rainbow Railroad received 13,402 requests for help, supported 5,886 people, and relocated 302 LGBTQ+ individuals from 36 countries.
While dislocation due to war, famine and persecution of all kinds roils the planet in ever-greater numbers — 1 in every 69 people globally is forcibly displaced, or about 115 million people — only about 5% of those in need of resettlement received it last year.
Integrating refugees has become a key element in an expanded remit for Rainbow Railroad, as they look to both broaden their mission and grapple with the U.S government slamming the door on new LGBTQ+ arrivals.
Rainbow Railroad’s Nugent says the initial support that refugees may need has been “weaponized against them” and “used in a lot of spaces to demonize refugees.”
The same executive order that halted refugee admissions in January slashed a State Department program designed specifically to help integrate refugees into U.S. communities.
It was called Welcome Corps.
“What the Welcome Corps program did was it allowed groups of volunteers of five-plus people to sponsor a refugee from overseas, and they would work with the refugee when they arrived for a three-month period to help to connect them with resources,” Nugent said.
The Biden administration initiative went live in 2023, and Rainbow Railroad became a partner, sponsoring travel to the U.S. and welcoming LGBTQ+ refugees to the country.
One of the first Welcome Corps arrivals: Javi from El Salvador.
“I never knew I was traveling from El Salvador to Chicago,” he said. “When I was in the airport was the moment when I realized I was traveling here.”
Javi spent close to a year speaking with different organizations about how to escape El Salvador, and came to the attention of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a United Nations-affiliated group. They brought Javi together with Welcome Corps and Rainbow Railroad.
“For security reasons, they only told me, basically, just the important information, but nothing about the place, nothing about who will be your sponsors, or who or where to go,” Javi says with a note of incredulity.
You can hear in his voice a kind of astonishment that he was now entrusting his life and future to a group of people he didn’t know in a place he’d never been, wherever that turned out to be.
At least life in El Salvador was the devil he knew.
“And it was very cold here,” Javi adds with a laugh.
He didn’t look happy, says one of his sponsors.
Bruce Koff, a longtime board member for Rainbow Railroad, organized what the org called a Community of Care group for Javi as part of their Welcome Corps partnership.
A therapist by trade, Koff brought together four gay men, including a Colombian social worker, two emigres from Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, and his own husband. They were tasked with settling Javi into his new community.
“We didn’t want to all go out to the airport at once and kind of overwhelm him,” Koff recounted. “We had no idea what that might be, what his state was.”
Mauricio, the Spanish speaker in the group, and David, one of the emigres, welcomed Javi at the airport.
“Two people were waiting for me, and in that moment I realized, these are from Rainbow Railroad,” Javi said, recalling a sense of relief.
“There are so many different opportunities to do good in the world…. But to actually have the experience of seeing one individual life transformed from one of fear and desperation to one of hope and stability is magical.Bruce Koff, a longtime board member for Rainbow Railroad
Still, it was an awkward first few hours for the refugee as he took in his new surroundings and literally acclimated to Chicago in December.
David and Mauricio took Javi to a restaurant to meet the other members of the group before heading to the apartment he’d be sharing with a friend of Bruce and his husband Mitchell.
“He spoke maybe about three or four words of English at the time, but we made sure he had a good, warm meal, and that he met us and knew who we were and what we were there to do,” Koff said.
“Mauricio spoke fluent Spanish, so there was that comfort, as well, that we could communicate with Javi from the very beginning.”
But it was a big meal and Javi wasn’t eating that much, Koff recalled.
“So I turned to him, and I said in my just okay Spanish, ‘You have to finish your meal, because you now have five mothers’ — cinco madres.” And he understood that, and he laughed. And it was such a relief to see him laugh, you know, in that first hour or two with us. And he’s been amazing ever since.”
Javi’s sponsors settled him in over their allotted three months with a small stipend from Rainbow Railroad and a GoFundMe campaign that raised enough to cover his expenses and bank a little more. The group helped with his work authorization, obtaining a Social Security number, applying for a green card, opening a bank account, and finding healthcare. His roommate plastered their apartment with Post-It notes that showed the English word for practically every object in it.
Javi found two food service jobs to get on his feet — “He’s very good with a budget,” Koff says — and now he’s working at a nonprofit doing community outreach with the Latin community. He already has a degree in social work earned in El Salvador; now he wants to pursue his master’s.
It’s just the kind of refugee success story Rainbow Railroad’s Nugent described.
“Honestly, he’s everything you want in someone coming to this country,” Koff said. “I mean, without exaggeration, he is such a fine person with a good mind who wants to contribute to the common good, and just make a good life for himself.”
“The only caveat to that,” Koff adds, “is the times that we live in, right? And the concerns that even though his status is completely legal, we have no idea what sort of risk he may still be facing.”
With Welcome Corps eliminated and refugee admissions now slashed, Rainbow Railroad is focused on resettlement efforts for refugees and asylum seekers already in the U.S.
They’re recruiting volunteers for a revived sponsor program with the same responsibilities, and launched a Community Access Fund to distribute money to service providers, community activists, and grassroots organizations supporting LGBTQ+ asylum seekers and other displaced migrants. A new Rainbow Housing Drive connects volunteer hosts with LGBTQ+ newcomers.
Contributing to the common good is a common theme among the refugees Nugent and Koff have worked with.
There was the very first person Rainbow Railroad relocated with Welcome Corps — to Washington DC — wide-eyed at his married sponsors walking hand-in-hand on the street and vowing to start his own support team to pay the support he was given forward.
There was the refugee relocated to San Francisco whose volunteer group helped land him a job. After he got his first paycheck, he asked, “Which organization in my community works with LGBTQI youth, because I want to donate to that organization.”
And there’s Javi, who’s shared his refugee experience with others contemplating an escape from persecution. He recently spoke with a young man in Uganda.
“It’s great to share the experience with other people about how they can change their life,” he said. “In those kinds of countries, it’s illegal to be gay. For gay people it’s very complicated even to have a good conversation with somebody, because all the time they are afraid to share their experience. I can help with that.”
It’s a virtuous cycle for refugees and volunteers alike.
“There are so many different opportunities to do good in the world,” says Koff. “This was just one, but to actually have the experience of seeing one individual life transformed from one of fear and desperation to one of hope and stability is magical. And it just helped me to realize that I don’t have to spend the day worrying about what’s the best way to respond to adversity in this world. There’s always a way to help.”
“They build community so quickly,” Nugent says of refugees. “They finally find that sense of home, and it makes them feel human. That’s it. It makes them feel human. And they show up in the world differently.”
Throughout Ali’s childhood in Iraq, he was repeatedly bullied by students and teachers for what he described as his feminine behavior. During his pre-teen and teenage years, men sexually assaulted him, but he couldn’t report it to the police for fear that he’d be thrown into jail for years since Iraq has criminalized homosexuality.
Ali was afraid to come out or talk about these assaults to his family. Although he wasn’t sure if his father knew he was gay, his dad knew other LGBTQ+ people from his travels abroad for work. His father used to tell him, “One day, we’re gonna go to travel to Europe or America and have a good life,” adding, “You’re gonna be safe and you’re gonna be happy.” But then his father died of a heart attack in 2014, and Ali’s abusive older brother (10 years his senior) assumed control of the family, making Ali terrified for his future.
In November 2023, Ali went out with another man for ice cream. While they were out in the rain, five Iraqi police officers suddenly surrounded and arrested them, believing they were romantically involved. Though Ali lied and told the officers they were just cousins, the officers accused them of being prostitutes and slapped, kicked, and hit them in the streets, eventually taking them to the police station.
At the police station, they took Ali’s phone and found images of male models and some men kissing. Police said that the images confirmed Ali’s intent to conduct sex work. They forced him to sign a confession that he had had sex with another man; one officer tried to coerce Ali into performing oral sex; and the police eventually threw him in jail, leaving his family with no clue as to his whereabouts.
In the remote jail, far from the city where Ali lived, he shared a cold, small, crowded cell with about 15 other people, ranging in age from 15 to 60. The police took Ali’s clothes and gave him dirty ones to wear, along with a small blanket.
“Everyone’s sleeping next to each other [on the floor] so close, and it was just so scary,” he told LGBTQ Nation. “Like, I was thinking an animal can’t even live there.” One guard suggested that he tell other inmates that he was arrested for using counterfeit money, because if he admitted he was gay, they might mistreat him.
“I was ultimately released, but I was terrified for my safety because the police had my home address and personal information and had accused me of being gay. I believed I could be imprisoned at any time,” Ali said in a court document explaining his situation. “After my arrest, I knew I had to leave the country to survive. I did not feel that I could trust anyone.”
Ali’s experiences mirror that of other LGBTQ+ Middle Easterners who are entrapped, harassed, detained, and tortured under suspicion of being queer. Ali considered taking his own life to escape the persecution, but he couldn’t go through with it.
A second chance, but with the U.S. government working against him
Ali eventually applied for aid under the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), a 1980 federal program that has helped millions of refugees fleeing persecution in their home countries to relocate safely in the United States and build lives, families, and businesses.
Refugee processing and resettlement are lengthy processes requiring participation from numerous governmental and nongovernmental entities. Ali, like thousands of refugees, first underwent extensive security checks and referrals before being approved under USRAP and resettling into a single apartment in the United States.
“When I learned I would be resettled in Dallas, I was so excited that I began screaming with happiness and jumping and dancing,” Ali said.
It’s hard to know exactly how many LGBTQ+ people seek asylum in the U.S., but a 2021 study by the Williams Institute estimated that 11,400 LGBTQ+ individuals did so between 2012 and 2017. Approximately 4,385 of them made asylum claims specifically related to their LGBTQ+ status.
I am very concerned that if people back in Iraq learned about my sexual orientation and my interactions with the police, my family would be in danger.Ali, a gay Iraqi refugee currently living in Dallas, Texas
He came to the U.S. with only $120 to his name. Upon arrival, Catholic Charities provided him with a case manager and financial assistance for his first three months, as well as help in finding other programs to assist him in getting a job and obtaining basic necessities. Ali soon applied for a matching grant program that would cover one year of rent and utilities and provide him a monthly allowance, as well as a Refugee Cash Assistance program to provide a monthly stipend for six months and potentially longer.
However, by early February, he was notified that both programs had shut down due to an executive order signed by Donald Trump on January 20, entitled “Realigning the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.” The order claimed that federally funded programs for admitting refugees aren’t in the country’s best interests because they “compromise the availability” of “taxpayer resources” for American citizens.
Trump’s order effectively halted refugee admissions indefinitely, ending USRAP and freezing millions in congressionally appropriated USRAP funding. Trump’s order threw Ali’s life into disarray, stranded thousands of other refugees and separated families who had already been approved under USRAP, and ended the funding of various groups and charities that used federal funding to provide vital survival benefits to refugees.
Ali learned that the case manager helping him secure benefits had been laid off after Trump’s order, and his apartment managers told him he might be evicted if he couldn’t pay the rent. Running out of food, he subsisted on peanut butter.
In response to the chaos, the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) filed Pacito v. Trump on February 10 in the Western District of Washington. The case is a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of the individuals and major resettlement agencies harmed by Trump’s order. It asserts that, by indefinitely ending USRAP, Trump and federal agencies exceeded their lawful authority and violated both federal law – and rulemaking procedures required under the Administrative Procedure Act – as well as the Constitution. The lawsuit seeks to block the order, restore funding, and enforce long-established protections for refugees.
In March, a district court agreed with IRAP’s lawsuit and granted a preliminary injunction against Trump’s order, writing, “The results have been harrowing.” The court noted that refugees have few (if any) rights – they have no right to work; limited access to healthcare, housing, or education; and often face discrimination.
Luckily, a charity helped Ali find a job at a local coffee shop, and he also secured a second job at a local mall. He had learned English, he said, by watching old episodes of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, a reality TV show about an ethnically Armenian celebrity family living in the United States. Now, he has made several good friends and has started building a community by attending a local church.
But other individual refugees who had been approved to come to the U.S. under USRAP after years of processing have either been stranded in the U.S. without homes or work or else trapped in their home or host countries as their scheduled flights to the U.S. were abruptly canceled, the district court wrote in its May decision. This has left the refugees vulnerable to physical danger and financial hardship without stable housing, income, basic necessities, alternative paths to refuge, or access to integration services that would help them become self-sufficient.
Furthermore, Trump’s order effectively defunded congressionally mandated resettlement-support services, making them unable to pay their employees and keep their offices open and undermining decades of work building up infrastructures, relationships, and the associated goodwill to facilitate refugee integration in local communities. The order required these services to furlough or lay off hundreds of staff all over the United States, threatening their continued existence.
The courts are trying to restrain Trump, but he has other plans
In April, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted the federal government a partial emergency stay of the district court’s injunction. While the appeals court has required the government to reinstate resettlement and placement services to refugees for 90 days after their admission into the United States, the court also appointed a magistrate judge to help review individual cases of refugees harmed by Trump’s order, while IRAP’s class action suit continues to be heard by the courts.
“Iraq is a very unsafe place for LGBTQ+ people,” Ali said in his court filing. “When I speak to people back in Iraq, I hide the fact that I’m gay and that the police arrested and abused me for being gay… I am very concerned that if people back in Iraq learned about my sexual orientation and my interactions with the police, my family would be in danger.”
I want to help everyone in my situation because it is difficult for me now, and I know there are other refugees who recently arrived and are struggling even more than me.Ali, a gay Iraqi refugee currently living in Dallas, Texas
Ali also worries that, if he criticizes the Trump Administration for ending USRAP, conservative organizations could somehow locate his name and personal information for harassment or violent retaliation. If his name is made public, it could make it even more difficult for him to find employment or could lead to other kinds of anti-immigrant and anti-gay discrimination.
Ali understands that, in this case, he’s not only representing himself, but thousands of other refugees nationwide and across the world. “I want to help everyone in my situation because it is difficult for me now, and I know there are other refugees who recently arrived and are struggling even more than me.”
The Trump Administration is considering a radical overhaul of USRAP that would continue to largely defund the program and reduce the number of refugees allowed annually into the U.S. from 125,000 (the number established by former President Joe Biden) to 7,500. Trump’s plan would give preferred relocation assistance to English speakers, white South Africans, and Europeans who have left their countries after making anti-immigrant statements or supporting anti-immigrant political parties, The New York Times reported on October 15.
“[Trump’s plan reflects] a preexisting notion… as to who are the true Americans,” said Barbara L. Strack, a former chief of the refugee affairs division at Citizenship and Immigration Services during the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations. “And they think it’s white people and they think it’s Christians.”
In a statement, IRAP wrote, “These actions reflect a broader pattern of President Trump attempting to strong-arm other branches of government into rubber-stamping his political agenda, sidestepping the checks and balances Congress established to ensure refugee policy serves humanitarian – not partisan- ends. Such departures from established process and principle undermine the United States’ legal obligations and moral leadership, sending a dangerous message that access to refuge may depend on identity rather than need.”
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