The United States refugee program, long a pillar of American foreign policy, has experienced dramatic ups and downs in recent years.
During his first term, President-elect Donald J. Trump drastically reduced the annual refugee cap. In 2020, the final full year of that term, the United States admitted about 11,000 refugees, a record low.
Then President Joe Biden revived the program. In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, about 100,000 refugees arrived to the country, the largest tally in nearly three decades.
Now, with Mr. Trump vowing to crack down on immigration again, refugee resettlement agencies are bracing to be gutted. They are scrambling to secure funding to keep alive operations that support refugees already in the country, and are trying to expedite the arrivals of people waiting in camps in Kenya, Jordan and Uganda.
“It makes my heart clench when I see a family scheduled to arrive after Jan. 20,” said Cynthia Shabb, executive director of Global Friends Coalition, a nonprofit in Grand Forks, N.D., that receives refugees from around the world.
“If Trump shuts resettlement down, no one will come,” said Ms. Shabb, as she scanned a list of people from Afghanistan, Somalia and Central America who are expected to arrive in the coming months.
Mr. Trump has promised an immigration agenda that targets not only undocumented immigrants but also the country’s refugee resettlement program, which he said on X in September that he would immediately “suspend.”
Project 2025, a policy blueprint crafted for the next Republican administration, suggests the incoming president cite the record number of migrant crossings that occurred under the Biden administration as justification for halting refugee resettlement.
A former Trump administration official, Kiron K. Skinner, recommends that the president-elect shift resources from the refugee program to the border, and that refugee admissions be suspended altogether.
In Project 2025, Ms. Skinner wrote that the federal government’s obligation to reallocate national security resources “to the forged border crisis will necessitate an indefinite curtailment” of refugee admissions. The program, however, is notably separate from other forms of immigration, as illegal migrants crossing the border are processed differently from refugees, who are fully vetted and approved for resettlement before arriving.
For decades, the U.S. refugee resettlement program reflected America’s ambition to be a world leader in human rights. And whether a Republican or a Democrat was in the White House, support for refugees was strong.
“The party of the president was irrelevant,” said Angie Plummer, whose nonprofit in Columbus, Ohio, has been helping resettle refugees in the state for a quarter of a century.
The president makes an annual determination of how many refugees the United States is willing to accept in a given year, and the numbers have varied, with Republican presidents setting some of the highest caps.
That changed under Mr. Trump, who took immediate aim at the program after he entered office in 2017.
He expressed particular contempt for people from predominantly Muslim countries like Yemen, Syria and Somalia, where war and hunger have displaced millions of people, and the ensuing instability provided sanctuary for violent extremists. He said that refugees from these nations could pose national security threats.
Many critics said that Mr. Trump’s policies were borne of religious and racial animosity rather than security concerns. Refugees from predominantly Muslim countries faced far more scrutiny than religious minorities who were mainly white Christians, whom his administration prioritized resettling.
As a result, thousands of refugees who had already been referred for resettlement in the United States became stranded in camps and unable to join family members who had arrived in the United States ahead of them.
After taking office, President Biden initially delayed raising the refugee cap amid political backlash over his handling of migration. But he eventually raised that cap to 125,000 for the 2022 fiscal year, and more than 100 new resettlement offices opened across the country.
“Trump eviscerated refugee resettlement, but we’ve since strengthened it to work better than ever,” said Mark Hetfield, the president of HIAS, a Jewish resettlement agency, noting that the vetting was more robust and the process more efficient.
Before entering the United States, refugees undergo background checks, interviews and medical screenings, which are part of a process that can take years to complete. They arrive with lawful status and can later apply for U.S. citizenship.
As Mr. Trump’s inauguration approaches, anxiety is rippling through refugee communities. Many Syrians, for instance, have been admitted to the country in recent years.
While Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, has been overthrown and exiled, conditions on the ground after almost 14 years of civil war remain precarious, and the country’s outlook remains uncertain. People assigned for resettlement in the United States remain eager to come.
Lana Alsharif and her husband, Abdul, fled Syria’s civil war and reached Egypt in 2013. They were assigned for resettlement in the United States, but their case languished while Mr. Trump was in office.
In September, the couple finally arrived in California with their two daughters, who are 2 and 4, and were resettled in Anaheim by HIAS.
Ms. Alsharif’s parents are booked on flights to the United States later this month, but her sister and her family still do not have a travel date.
“We are happy that our parents are arriving, but our happiness is not complete,” she said, “because when there is a new president, we don’t think my sister will be allowed to come.”
Yamad Alsadia, a Syrian refugee, arrived in 2022 with her husband and children after waiting in Egypt for nearly a decade. Her mother and brothers have yet to arrive.
“We are all worried that Trump will do what he did last time,” said Ms. Alsadia, who also lives in Anaheim. “For years, we have been in limbo.”
Joanna Krause, the executive director of Canopy Northwest Arkansas, said that 131 people whom the resettlement agency has been expecting are finalizing medical screenings and travel arrangements.
“It really keeps me up at night,” Ms. Krause said. “Will they all make it?”
Some people working in refugee resettlement have tried to secure meetings with Mr. Trump’s pick for secretary of state, Marco Rubio, hoping to convince him to preserve the program.
They highlighted that refugees have been considered a boon to the economy. Food processing plants, which faced fines for hiring undocumented immigrants, have increasingly turned to refugees.
In North Dakota, where there is a chronic labor shortage, refugees in Grand Forks pack pasta at Winland Foods, make French fries for McDonald’s at J.R. Simplot and stock shelves at Walmart.
In Columbus, Ms. Plummer leads Community Refugee & Immigration Services, which started in a garage with a handful of staffers helping southeast Asians and Somalis. The organization expanded to a three-story brick building and now has 120 employees. Today, newcomers often are from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Bhutan.
When he arrived in Columbus in 2017, Redi Rekab, a 54-year-old widower, threw himself into his warehouse job. Months turned into years of separation from his two children, whom he left behind when he fled Eritrea.
His daughter, Yirghalem, 24, finally arrived earlier this year. His son, Tiferi, 25, is still waiting to complete a medical screening — the last step before he joins his family in the United States.
“If my son doesn’t get here soon, I am just hoping that Mr. Trump will let him in,” said Mr. Rekab. “We just want to be together.”
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