Trump Presidencies See Record Lows in Refugee Admissions
This article is published in collaboration with Statista
by Katharina Buchholz
By the end of Trump's first term in fiscal year 2020, the number of asylum claims granted in the United States had sunk to a historic low of just 11,800, as seen in official figures. While new arrivals to the U.S. and other countries slowed to a trickle during the coronavirus pandemic, the statistic at hand shows final and permanent admissions to the country, which often happen years after an individual has asked for asylum.
In the fiscal year of 2026, the first one fully governed by Trump in his second term, refugee admissions reached 16,300, comprised almost entirely of white South Africans except for five Afghan asylees. Both numbers are the lowest on record since 1975 together with the FY2021 figure (when both Trump and Joe Biden were president). They undercut even the 27,100 refugees admitted in 2002, the year after 9/11 and the passing of the Patriot Act.
Right at the start of Trump's second term in January 2025, the new administration cut refugees quotas and further tightened entry at the Southern U.S. border, denying those entering the country without documents even the brief chance to argue a case for claiming asylum during the expedited removal process. Taking away these short hearings, so-called fear interviews, has a questionable legality. Previously, the Biden administration had also made asylum at the Southern border more difficult for new arrivals when Covid-era rules ended in mid-2023. It did so by relying further on fear interviews, expedited removals and encouraging people to use pathways to U.S. humanitarian visas before arriving at the border. Trump in May unexpectedly upped refugee quotas again in benefit of South African refugees he said were persecuted by their country's government and political parties. Their admissions made up 99.9 percent of new asylees last fiscal year.
Refugees from Asia have historically been the largest group of people being granted asylum in the U.S. Almost 45 percent of grantees since 1975 came from that continent (excluding South Asia), with the biggest influxes from Vietnam around 1980, Hmong and Laotians up to around 1992 and from Myanmar and Bhutan around 2008. Refugees from the former Soviet Union grew more numerous in the 1990s and finally, many asylees from the Near East in the 2000s and 2010 reflect the wars in the region during that time fought with U.S. involvement.
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