AHRC CONDEMNS THE TRUMP REFUGEE CAP FOR 2026 - IT IS CRUEL

by Melanie Nathan, Oct 31, 2025.

On October 31, the Trump administration published its Presidential Determination on Refugee Admissions (PD) in the Federal Register, which sets the refugee admissions ceiling at the historic, cruel and shameful low of only 7,500 people. The PD also prioritizes the resettlement of Afrikaners (white South Africans) - while turning its back on over 120,000 refugees who were already conditionally approved for resettlement as of January 20.

The individuals AHRC has worked with have endured years of rigorous screening, credibility assessments, and security vetting before finally reaching the point of U.S. Embassy/State Department acceptance for resettlement — only to find their cases abruptly frozen for yet another year or more. During this limbo, people remain exposed to arbitrary arrest, unlawful detention in appalling prison conditions, and even refoulement back to the very countries that have threatened to kill them. At the same time, much of the U.S. aid that supported new arrivals has been rolled back under Trump-era policies, and with the resettlement pipeline now constricted, a severe humanitarian crisis is worsening.

In stark contrast, white South African Afrikaners are being facilitated to apply for U.S. refugee or humanitarian pathways from the comfort and safety of their own homes — even shipping their household goods to the United States in advance. In most such cases there is no credible, individualized persecution that would meet the international refugee standard; rather, the Trump administration is distorting the refugee process into an expedient immigration channel for the very beneficiaries and architects of apartheid-era privilege who are discontent with a democratic South Africa. This is not protection-driven migration; it is preference-driven migration — and it risks importing into the United States a constituency primed for MAGA-style white only ideology, anti-equality politics.

This policy is a calculated inversion of America’s humanitarian promise: By privileging white Afrikaners while abandoning the Black and queer refugees who have survived imprisonment, torture, and years of security vetting, the administration has transformed compassion into currency and justice into a political tool. Refugee protection was never meant to serve racial preference or electoral optics — it was meant to uphold life itself. The moral rot here runs deeper than numbers; it is the willful erasure of those who have already been approved, already proven their worth, and are now left to die waiting at the gates of a nation that once called itself a beacon of hope.

At AHRC we refuse to be defeated by this crisis or by the injustice that created it — and we are doubling down. We’re thrilled to share that three refugees from one of the groups we support are finally taking their flights to Canada. In addition, several new refugees we advocated for have now been mandated, and we even secured a mandate on appeal for someone who had previously been declined.

This is the kind of quiet, life-changing work your support makes possible — and we cannot do it without your generosity.

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