The United States and the world’s wealthiest countries have turned their backs on refugees | Opinion

The number of displaced people worldwide has reached 122 million — the largest on record. Of this group, 38 million are categorized as refugees — another tragic record. Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan and Venezuela each recently lost over 6 million people as refugees. South Sudan is in the grip of ethnic violence, and Sudan is facing starvation amid a civil war, with refugees fleeing both countries.

Twenty percent more refugees will need resettlement in 2025 than in 2024, yet pathways to safety in the West are narrowing rapidly.

President-elect Donald Trump’s second term might usher in an era of cruelty. Trump has vowed to start mass deportations of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. and scale back humanitarian protections for many individuals legally residing here. Many of these migrants are refugees who have the right to apply for asylum.

Opinion

The contrast between the world’s dire humanitarian moment and the president-elect’s rhetoric could not be sharper. Refugee fatigue and anti-immigrant sentiments sweep across the Global North. At the time of greatest need, the world’s wealthiest societies are turning their back on refugees. They are restricting the right to asylum by violating domestic and international laws.

Anti-refugee sentiments have been fueling the rise of far-right parties, and Trump’s second term will see these movements in full bloom.

Far-right parties that were previously regarded as untouchable for their racist and antisemitic rhetoric now sweep European elections. In the past year, the Freedom Party came first in the Austrian elections; the Alternative for Germany won its first state election and is poised to do well in German federal elections in 2025; and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally won the European Parliament elections in France. These parties made refugee admission their top issue and flaunted hard-line policies to reduce immigration.

Trump also made immigration central to his 2024 campaign, promising “the largest deportation program in American history.” Trump also vowed to scale back the Temporary Protected Status program for Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio. TPS provides a work permit and protection from deportation to nationals of 17 countries deemed unsafe to return to, including Haiti, Ukraine and Syria.

Refugee resettlement is likely on the chopping block for the incoming administration. When Trump first took office, he reduced President Barack Obama’s cap of 110,000 refugee admissions for 2017 to 50,000. The Trump administration further decreased the cap every year until setting it at 15,000 for 2021 — a record low. Biden’s administration, predictably, moved in the opposite direction, raising the ceiling. It is now set at 125,000 for 2025, but Trump will likely start cutting it again.

Despite higher quotas, only 197,000 refugees were admitted to the U.S. under Biden, versus 118,000 refugees under Trump. Those are not high numbers; they rank among the three lowest for a presidential term since the creation of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program in 1980.

Even more alarming is the practice of offshoring asylum. Recently, western states started making legally dubious deals, paying third countries to hold refugees as their cases slowly move through asylum review. Trump’s first administration implemented the Remain in Mexico program in 2019, making migrants wait for their asylum hearings while in Mexico (the Biden administration ended that program).

In 2024, Italy finalized a deal with Albania, which will host Italian processing facilities for asylum seekers. In 2022, Denmark signed an agreement with Rwanda to hold its asylum seekers, and the United Kingdom considered a similar scheme in Rwanda. These practices place refugees in dangerous situations, are costly and ineffective in preventing irregular migration and violate domestic and international laws on asylum.

There is a solution that meets this historic moment: expand domestic infrastructure in processing and housing asylum seekers while their cases undergo review, thereby creating thousands of jobs and growing local economies, especially near the border. This solution upholds laws on asylum and saves the lives of the most vulnerable.

Trump’s administration is likely to do the opposite.

Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky is an assistant professor of global migration and forced displacement at UC Santa Barbara. He is the author of “Empire of Refugees” and a public voices fellow of The OpEd Project.