The Indefinite Suspension of All Refugees Is Unjustified

Refugees aren't economic or security threats

After President Trump nearly eliminated admissions during his first term in office, President Biden rebuilt and revitalized the US refugee process, admitting the highest number of refugees since the 1990s. In FY 2025, the United States was on pace to accept about 120,000 refugees, the most since the 1990s. By January 20, about 37,000 were already admitted.

But on his first day in office, January 20, President Trump signed Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), which suspends refugee admissions. The executive order technically ordered the suspension to start at midnight on January 27 (Sunday night), but it started immediately.

Contents of the Executive Order on Refugees

1. Suspends indefinitely the USRAP program for refugees that enter the country legally after vetting abroad, starting January 27, 2025, at midnight (Sunday night);

2. Orders the creation of a process to allow states and local governments to have a veto over refugees resettling in their jurisdictions;

3. Orders DHS to create admission criteria to preserve “taxpayer resources for [US] citizens” and exclude anyone who cannot “assimilate”;

4. Orders DHS to determine within 90 days whether the refugee program should restart;

5. Rescinds President Biden’s 2021 executive order that ordered the creation of private sponsorship options and the rebuilding of the refugee program after Trump gutted it; and,

6. Allows refugees to be exempted from the ban if approved by both the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Effects of the Order

The delayed effect of the refugee suspension never happened. All flights were immediately suspended on January 21. In addition, exemption authority appears to be a dead letter, as the administration has not established any process for obtaining or requesting an exemption. A subsequent memo has canceled all “previously scheduled travel” and suspended all referrals and case processing activities without any exemptions. This means that nothing will happen to prepare anyone for departure during and after the suspension.

We can safely predict that refugee admissions will be close to zero for at least the next 90 days and likely for the remainder of the year.

In the last week, the administration canceled departures for 10,000 refugees who had already been cleared for travel. This includes 1,660 Afghans already approved for entry. More than 10,000 other Afghans who were promised resettlement are currently stranded in Pakistan. This group includes minor children left behind in the evacuation. Their American veteran advocates are urging President Trump to reconsider.

Nearly 90 percent of refugees came from the following countries in FY 2025: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Syria, Burma (Myanmar), Somalia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Sudan, Eritrea, and Iraq. Notably, there are no more permanent nationality-specific exclusions yet, as there were when Trump suspended refugees in 2017. The order also does not limit the grounds for resettlement as did Trump’s 2020 proclamation. But the suspension is worldwide, and the order’s “assimilation” requirement to restart hints that these types of restrictions are coming.

Although President Trump has previously voiced support for Christian refugees, his first-term restrictions also negatively affected them. The Trump administration reduced the entry of Christian refugees by 78 percent in his first term. In contrast, President Biden increased the number of Christian refugee admissions to the highest level on record. In fiscal year 2024, about half of all refugees were Christians, meaning that most refugees excluded under the Trump refugee suspension are likely Christians as well.

Justification for the Order

This latest order does not repeat the absurdly weak national security justification of the 2017 refugee suspension. Perhaps Cato’s research, which thoroughly refuted the president’s assertion, had an effect. As my colleague Alex Nowrasteh has calculated, the annual chance of being killed in a refugee terrorism attack between 1975 and 2023 was one in 3.4 billion, with almost all deaths occurring decades ago, before modern vetting procedures were in place. My research has identified only four refugees who were plausibly admitted as the result of a “vetting failure” and committed terrorism-related offenses of any kind from 2002 to 2016—none of whom killed anyone in the United States.

Instead, the president has inserted another absurdly weak claim: that the United States “lacks the ability to absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees.” It cites “influxes of migrants” to New York City, Chicago, Denver, Charleroi, Pennsylvania, Springfield, Ohio, and Whitewater, Wisconsin. However, these locations are not significant destination cities for refugees who entered the country legally.

To the extent that local officials in those cities expressed concerns, they primarily related to illegal immigration. Their worries reportedly included the migrants’ inability to obtain proper documents; the challenges they fact to work legally and support themselves; issues with obtaining driver’s licenses; and limited vetting of migrants. However, none of these concerns apply to refugees, who are more thoroughly vetted than any other category, receive legal documents, and can work immediately.

Refugees have a positive economic effect on the United States, as they fill critical roles in the US labor force. Economist Michael Clemens found that President Trump’s previous refugee suspension and its limited resumption:

costs the overall US economy today over $9.1 billion per year ($30,962 per missing refugee per year, on average) and costs public coffers at all levels of government over $2.0 billion per year ($6,844 per missing refugee per year, on average) net of public expenses

In 2017, the White House ordered the Department of Health and Human Services to produce a rigorous accounting of the fiscal effects of refugees and asylees in the United States. That study revealed that the net fiscal effect of the average refugee or asylee since 1990 was positive. Although the White House blocked the official publication of this report, it was ultimately leaked to the New York Times. Furthermore, the report was updated last year to include data through 2022. This update found that the “net fiscal impact of refugees and asylees was positive over the 15-year period, amounting to $123.8 billion” from 2005 to 2019.

Even more significantly, the president has suspended entries even through the private refugee sponsorship programs known as Welcome Corps. This process allows groups of Americans, US employers, and US universities to raise the funds necessary to resettle refugees in the United States. As of April 2024, more than 65,000 Americans had signed up to sponsor someone. This makes his assertions of the lack of capacity even more dubious than if he had adopted this justification in 2017.

President Trump should restart the refugee program. At a minimum, he should reinstate Welcome Corps and create a straightforward process to apply for an exemption from the suspension.