The United States once led most other nations on resettling refugees from all over the world. But in the fiscal year 2025- 2026, except for three people from Afghanistan, all of the 10,258 people admitted through resettlement were white South Africans.

But admitting en masse the beneficiaries of South African apartheid, while simultaneously cancelling temporary protected status (TPS) for 350,000 Haitians, and making a spectacle of detaining and shackling them, is just the tip of the racist iceberg: the Trump administration is reportedly using this moment to double the initial resettlement support that refugees receive to $4,500 per person.

As an expert on resettlement, I have been advocating for years for an increase in resettlement support. In 2022, I wrote a book showing the inadequacy of existing systems of support, and even consulted for the office of refugee resettlement on the issue. Yet, when the refugees weren’t white, the advocacy was not heard.

Resettled refugees are an anomaly in the United States landscape for immigrant support, in that they are one of the very few legal categories of immigrants to receive any form of cash assistance. That is because they are selected, in theory, on the basis of humanitarian need. The people in my book were Syrians who had escaped war, many of whom had children with chronic health issues.

This is yet another reason why this administration’s politicization of the refugee resettlement protection – at the exclusion of people who actually need it........

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