{"id":1505,"date":"2025-11-09T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globaltaalenthq.com\/?p=1505"},"modified":"2025-11-10T08:48:42","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T08:48:42","slug":"trumps-historic-cut-to-refugee-program-poised-to-face-legal-challenges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globaltaalenthq.com\/index.php\/2025\/11\/09\/trumps-historic-cut-to-refugee-program-poised-to-face-legal-challenges\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump's historic cut to refugee program poised to face legal challenges"},"content":{"rendered":"

Refugee advocates are considering litigation after President Trump moved to cut refugee figures to their lowest level in history while favoring admissions for white South Africans<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Trump last week set a cap<\/a> that would allow the U.S. to admit no more than 7,500 refugees, a 94 percent cut from former President Biden\u2019s goal of 125,000.<\/p>\n

In doing so, the White House appeared to sidestep Congress, posting the notification on the Federal Register a month after it was signed without consulting with congressional Democrats.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe statute does not require the president to consult with the members of his own party who are in Congress. The statute requires the president to consult with specific committees in Congress, and that includes members of both parties,\u201d Laurie Ball Cooper, vice president for U.S. legal programs with the International Refugee Assistance Project, said on a call with reporters.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo that’s one set of legal problems. It’s also hugely problematic that this document sets up a race-based preference system instead of a humanitarian protection system, and so I expect to see a number of challenges to this.\u201d<\/p>\n

The figure set by Trump would fall well below the lowest number of refugee admissions attained under his first administration \u2014 11,814, then an all-time low<\/a> reached at the height of the COVID pandemic.<\/p>\n

Trump also directs that \u201cthe admissions numbers shall primarily be allocated among Afrikaners from South Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n

Critics see the designation as an abandonment of the goals set by the 1980 program, which formalized existing U.S. policies on accepting those displaced because of persecution and danger.<\/p>\n

House Democrats said they were never consulted about the major decline in admissions or the shift in focus on who would be granted the protections. <\/p>\n

Failure to consult with Congress could spur a challenge, possibly under claims that the administration violated the Administrative Procedures Act.<\/p>\n

House Democrats can\u2019t sue on behalf of Congress, but they could make their opinion known by submitting an amicus brief in any litigation.<\/p>\n

\u201cNeither Democratic nor Republican leadership on the Judiciary committees was consulted. So we have a litigation group in the House to deal with the reign of lawlessness that we’re seeing across the government, and we file amicus briefs in a whole bunch of different cases,\u201d said Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we’re going to explore all of our options here, knowing that we take very seriously a flawed process, and a flawed process that has produced a completely egregious result in essentially the destruction of the refugee program, except as it relates to the favored white Afrikaners minority from South Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n

The low numbers set by the cap are another deviation.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo president other than Trump has set the ceiling below 60,000 in the 45-year history of the program,\u201d said Erol Kekic, senior vice president of Church World Service, a refugee resettlement group.<\/p>\n

The content of the order itself could also be subject to challenge, with refugee advocates arguing it unfairly weighs race rather than the dangerous conditions refugees face in their home countries. <\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s reference to Afrikaners said the program should be open to those who face \u201cillegal or unjust discrimination.” But that\u2019s different from the existing standard of accepting those who have fled because of conflict, violence, or persecution.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe wording in the [presidential determination] that references illegal or unjust discrimination, that is not the definition of a refugee under U.S. law, or, for that matter, international law,\u201d said John Slocum, executive director of Refugee Council USA.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s certainly not legally sound in terms of its reference to how populations will be selected for this program.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump has repeatedly expressed concern for the white minority group in South Africa, saying they face \u201chateful rhetoric\u201d and \u201cdisproportionate violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump signed an order in February encouraging the U.S. to accept Afrikaners as refugees, citing a new law allowing the South African government to seize land for public use<\/a>. The new law allows the government to do so for citizens of any race, but Trump has nonetheless claimed the law was designed to \u201cseize ethnic minority Afrikaners\u2019 agricultural property without compensation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis Act follows countless government policies designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education, and business, and hateful rhetoric and government actions fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners,\u201d Trump wrote in the order.<\/p>\n

South Africa has a high crime rate, and its government has denied Trump\u2019s claims surrounding Afrikaners, calling them \u201ccompletely false.\u201d<\/p>\n

South Africa’s ambassador to Washington, Ebrahim Rasool, previously said<\/a> Trump\u2019s comments were “mobilising a supremacism” and trying to “project white victimhood as a dog whistle.\u201d<\/p>\n

The U.S. has already welcomed more than 50 Afrikaners, and additional vetting of applicants from there is expected in the coming months.<\/p>\n

Raskin said the focus on the group was an abandonment of the program\u2019s goals.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s not the standard traditional language of a well-founded fear of persecution and so on. It’s this new standard that seems a little bit customized to address the situation of the Afrikaners,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s clearly a weakening of the general standard, I think, to somehow justify their exclusive, disproportionate and indefensible focus on Afrikaners. And we need to get back to the idea that we are rescuing people who are facing emergency conditions because of persecution, for racial, ethnic, political, religious, gender-based reasons and so on.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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