SILVER SPRING, Md. — HIAS strongly condemns the Trump administration’s reported decision to increase the refugee admissions ceiling mid-year in order to admit an additional 10,000 white South Africans, while tens of thousands of refugees fleeing war, persecution, and violence remain stranded and blocked from protection – and have remained that way since January 20, 2025. The continued use of prioritization of white South Africans negates and demonizes the lived experience of millions of refugees around the world.
“For nearly half a century, the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program embodied a simple but powerful, bipartisan idea: that the United States would offer safety to the world’s most vulnerable refugees,” said Beth Oppenheim, President & CEO of HIAS. “This administration is now dismantling that legacy in plain sight. While refugee families from Afghanistan, Sudan, Iran, Venezuela, Haiti, and elsewhere have been abandoned after years of vetting and waiting, the administration is reportedly expanding refugee admissions almost exclusively to prioritize white South Africans. That is not refugee protection. It is the politicization of a humanitarian program in service of an ideological agenda.”
“The repercussions would extend far beyond this single decision,” Oppenheim continued. “Senior administration officials are openly discussing plans to transform refugee resettlement from a permanent and generationally changing protection pathway into a temporary status that can be revoked regardless of ongoing risks to safety. Refugees are not political props. They are human beings seeking safety, permanence, and the chance to rebuild their lives.”
HIAS also warned that the reports reflect the administration’s broader embrace of “remigration” ideology. The reported creation of a State Department Office of Remigration represents a dangerous normalization of extremist ideas that portray non-white immigration as a threat to Western societies.
“For generations, refugees have strengthened this country,” Oppenheim said. “The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program has offered safety not only to survivors of persecution, but to their children and grandchildren. To dismantle that legacy and replace it with a system driven by ideology and exclusion is a rupture in the arc of American history – including my own, which would not have been possible without HIAS’s help of my own grandfather.”
HIAS will continue fighting these policies in the courts, in Congress, and in the public square. We refuse to accept the dismantling of refugee protection as inevitable, and we reject efforts to transform one of America’s most important humanitarian commitments into a vehicle for exclusion, racial hierarchy, and fear. The future of refugee protection belongs to every person who has ever been brave enough to step onto a boat, a plane, a car, or to walk a long road far from who and what they love and know. It is not only our job, but our legacy, to protect it for everyone.
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