Donald Trump and religious zealots stopped religious refugee immigration. This policy is not Christian denying our nation's religious history

 Trump’s refugee policy hurts people fleeing religious persecution.

Editorial published in the Boston Globe by the editorial board.

Despite priding itself on religious liberty, the White House is on track to admit no refugees fleeing countries with a record of religious persecution.

In a sadly 😢dubious milestone, the White House is on track to resettle zero refugees fleeing countries with a record of religious persecution in the fiscal year that ended Wednesday, according to an analysis by World Relief and Open Doors US, two Christian humanitarian organizations that advocate for persecuted Christians. At a time when religious persecution remains at high levels worldwide, that’s a shameful record.

Persecution affects many different religious groups, including Christians, Muslims, Jews, Yazidis, Sikhs, and Zoroastrians, among others. Nearly 5,000 Christians alone have been killed due to their religious beliefs in the past year, according to Open Doors US.

Refugee resettlements are down sharply overall through the 2026 fiscal year ending Wednesday. In January of 2025, Donald Trump suspended the refugee program entirely, and in September of 2025, he set the 2026 fiscal year admissions ceiling to an extremely small number of 7,500 refugees before raising it later to 17,500, with white Afrikaners given priority. Meanwhile, the US State Department has not released its annual report on religious freedom conditions worldwide since 2023.

Since the failure to accept Jewish refugees before the Holocaust caused a reckoning over asylum policies in Western countries, the United States has played a significant role in accepting refugees facing persecution based on race, religion, or nationality. Since 1975, the US has resettled more than 3 million people fleeing some kind of serious persecution, and the Refugee Act, which led to the US Refugee Program, was passed in 1980.

As of December 2025, the United Nations estimated that there are 117.8 million people worldwide displaced due to persecution, violence, or other human rights violations. About 41.6 million of those are classified as refugees by the UN. Roughly 39 percent are children, and 70 percent came from just six countries: Afghanistan, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, and Venezuela.

Often times, religion is tightly tied together with ethnic, racial, or social persecution, so there is little tracking of specific types of persecution, World Relief vice president of advocacy and policy Matthew Soerens told the editorial board. However, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom has identified 18 countries whose governments have engaged in “systemic, ongoing, and egregious” violations of religious freedom, including Afghanistan, Syria, Nigeria, North Korea, and China.

During Trump’s first administration, the White House expressed prioritization of religious refugees. In a 2019, speech on religious freedom, Trump stated that “No matter the case, America will always be a voice for victims of religious persecution everywhere. No matter where you go, you have a place in the United States of America.”

But his actions haven’t matched his words. World Relief and Open Doors US said the failure to admit a single religious refugee would be a modern first. Along with nearly 3,500 other evangelical Christians, they petitioned the White House last week to reopen the refugee program more broadly.

But the president has shown little sign of changing course. Last week, the Trump administration moved to keep the cap at 17,500 refugees, still prioritizing white Afrikaners, according to reports.

Additionally, the administration allowed nearly $1 billion in funding, much of which would have gone toward a Health and Human Services account supporting refugees and asylum seekers, to expire this week.

“When federal support for this work falls short, the need doesn’t disappear. It falls to the schools, congregations, and local communities that have to step up in the absence of federal leadership,” Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of refugee resettlement nonprofit Global Refuge, said in a statement.

Ara Torosian, an Iranian American pastor in West Los Angeles, came to the United States as a refugee fleeing religious persecution for his faith. “America did not ask me to stop being Iranian; it gave me the freedom to stop being afraid,” he told the report’s authors.  “If America stops being a refuge for people running from tyranny, we lose something far greater than a policy: We lose part of who we are.”