By Melanie Nathan, oct 30 2025.
Every October the U.S. president is bound by Congress to publish how many refugees will come into the country for the following year. This Presidential Determination (PD) on Refugee Admissions for for year 2026 is now public and in the Federal Register (set to be published tomorrow) – here – it is https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2025-19752.pdf
The PD includes an admissions target of just 7,500, a historic low. No president other than Trump has ever set a ceiling below 60,000 in the 45-year history of the program. The slots will be reserved “primarily” for white South Africans.
-
With zero legally required consultations with Congress or a required Report to Congress outlining how the program will respond to humanitarian need. The line in the PD that says it has been issued after an “appropriate consultation” is false to the best of our knowledge.
-
While explicitly keeping the ongoing, indefinite refugee ban EO in place, which has stranded over 100,000 conditionally-approved refugees around the world in increasingly perilous conditions.
-
With no reference to Lautenberg program protecting those fleeing religious persecution
I strongly encourage all who are able to use their voice to push back on this.
More talking points, statements, and resources to come! In the meantime spread the news about this cruelty.
This is impacting thousands of refugees who were scheduled to come to the USA. It also decimates the systems in place and takes away work and grants from hundreds of organizations across the country and beyond.
Speaking only to what in my personal knowledge: Due to my work at African Human Rights Coalition (AHRC), I can attest to the reality that scores of LGBTQI+ refugees are fleeing brutal violence, in criminalization, and the constant threat of mob attacks that too often end in death. Across the continent there is effectively no genuinely safe place for them — even within so-called “protection” or host country settings- because the very states tasked with hosting them are themselves hostile. The individuals AHRC has worked with have typically endured a minimum of four 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 and preventable humanitarian crisis is unfolding.
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, and ……. more.
Melanie Nathan
Country Conditions Expert
Director: African Human Rights Coalition
commissionermnathan@gmail.com
O-blog-dee-o-blog-da 