The cap is the latest effort by the administration to slash migration, both illegal and legal.
The US refugee program has long received bipartisan support, but has come under attack by the Republican president and his allies as a vulnerable back door that lets criminals and terrorists into the country. People who apply for refugee status must go through a lengthy vetting process before being accepted.The president also signed a determination transferring the United States Program of Initial Refugee Resettlement from the State Department to the Department of Health and Human Services, run by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Groups that resettle new refugees in the US have been hard hit by Trump’s limits, and advocates decried his decision on Thursday.
“By privileging Afrikaners while continuing to ban thousands of refugees who have already been vetted and approved, the administration is once again politicizing a humanitarian program,” International Refugee Assistance Project President Sharif Aly said in a statement.
Trump suspended refugee resettlement on his first day in office and only a handful have been admitted since then. The administration has mostly focused on taking in White South Africans, who Trump has claimed, without evidence, are facing a “genocide” at the hands of the country’s Black majority government. Several others have arrived under court order in a case demanding entry for refugees who were en route to the US when resettlement was suspended.
“The admissions numbers shall primarily be allocated among Afrikaners from South Africa,” the register notice reads, “and other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination in their respective homelands.” It does not, however, specifically mention Afghans or other groups escaping war, famine or targeted crackdowns.
Shawn VanDiver, founder of the nonprofit group AfghanEvac that supports Afghans who assisted the US war effort, called the policy “a moral collapse that abandons the very allies who stood shoulder to shoulder with our troops.”
Trump in February signed an executive order directing the government to cut aid to South Africa and promote resettlement of Afrikaners who it says face “government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation.” The South African government and several Afrikaner groups have denied the allegations.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s attempt to debunk claims made by Trump and other US officials led to a tense Oval Office meeting in May.
Administration officials are required by law to consult the House and Senate on their refugee determination ahead of the new fiscal year, which was Oct. 1, before setting a cap. A senior administration official said that had not yet occurred, blaming the ongoing government shutdown.
