President Donald Trump is continuing to make it more difficult for people to enter the United States with his new refugee limits. According to a notice posted to the Federal Register on October 30, the Trump administration announced that the U.S. will welcome a record low number of refugees into the country, and most of them will be white South Africans.
During the upcoming fiscal year, from October 2025 to September 2026, the U.S. will cap the number of refugees entering the country at 7,500. This limit is the lowest it’s been since the start of the U.S. refugee program in 1980, NPR reported. Previously, former president Joe Biden set the limit at 125,000.
Though the Trump administration says the U.S. will prioritize white South Africans and “and other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination in their respective homelands,” the South African government has denied the persecution of white South Africans. Previously, South Africa’s ambassador to Washington, Ebrahim Rasool, was expelled by the Trump administration after he accused Trump of using “white victimhood as a dog whistle” and “mobilizing a supremacism,” the BBC reported.
Trump just issued a plan to lower refugee admissions to their lowest ever, primarily to white Afrikaners, seeking to decimate refugee resettlement as we know it.
— IRAP (@IRAP) October 30, 2025
Our partners and advocates remind us of what is still at stake and the future that refugees deserve: pic.twitter.com/lW6VVgMkgZ
The Trump administration did not really explain the new refugee limit. They claimed that this change “serves the national interest, promotes efficient use of taxpayer dollars, protects the integrity of the United States immigration system, and supports refugees in achieving early economic self-sufficiency and assimilation into American society,” per Politico. According to the administration, the significant shift is due to “humanitarian concerns” and “national interest.”
Let's call Trump's new refugee determination what it is:
— Jeremy Konyndyk (@JeremyKonyndyk) October 31, 2025
a bald ploy to redefine refugees on the basis of whiteness rather than persecution,
and to thereby redefine who can belong in America, and who cannot.
It turns refugee protection into white identity politics.
🧵 https://t.co/nEpDogwJHR
However, many refugee organizations and advocates have criticized the decision. In a statement, Refugees International stated that the decision is “meant to send a blatantly racist political message about who belongs in America, not to provide protection to persecuted people.” The organization also argued that the change “makes a mockery of refugee protection and of American values” and “does material harm to tens of thousands of refugees abroad who the United States previously vetted and approved to resettle and unite with family.”
Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president of refugee resettlement organization Global Refuge, said, “This decision doesn’t just lower the refugee admissions ceiling. It lowers our moral standing. For more than four decades, the U.S. refugee program has been a lifeline. Concentrating the vast majority of admissions on one group undermines the program’s purpose, as well as its credibility,” per the New York Times.
