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WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump set the refugee admissions ceiling at 7,500 for fiscal year 2026, the lowest cap on record, a White House document published on Thursday said, part of a broader effort to reshape refugee policies in the US and worldwide.
Trump said in an annual refugee determination dated September 30 that admissions would be focused largely on South Africans from the country’s white Afrikaner ethnic minority.
Trump has claimed Afrikaners face persecution based on their race in the Black-majority country, allegations the South African government has denied. Trump paused all US refugee admissions when he took office in January, saying they could only be restarted if they were established to be in the best interests of the US Weeks later, he launched an effort to bring in Afrikaners, sparking criticism from refugee supporters. Only 138 South Africans had entered the US by early September, Reuters reported at the time.
In the determination published on Thursday, Trump said his administration would consider bringing in “other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination in their respective homelands.” An internal document drafted by US government officials in April suggested the administration could also prioritize bringing in Europeans as refugees if they were targeted for expressing certain views, such as opposition to mass migration or support for populist political parties. Europeans and other groups were not named in Trump’s public refugee plan.
US law requires the executive branch to consult with members of Congress before setting refugee levels, but Democratic lawmakers said on September 30 that the meeting never took place. In a statement on Thursday, US Representative Jamie Raskin, US Senator Dick Durbin and other Democratic lawmakers said Trump’s low refugee cap was both wrongheaded and lacked legal force.
“This bizarre presidential determination is not only morally indefensible, it is illegal and invalid,” the lawmakers said.
A senior Trump administration official blamed the government shutdown that began on October 1 for delayed consultation and said no refugees would be admitted until it occurred.
During the United Nations General Assembly in September, top Trump administration officials urged other nations to join a global campaign to roll back asylum protections, a major shift that would seek to reshape the post-World War Two migration framework.
This month, Reuters and other outlets reported Trump’s plans for the 7,500-person refugee ceiling, which contrasts sharply with the 100,000 refugees who entered under former President Joe Biden in fiscal 2024.
Gideon Maltz, CEO of Tent Partnership for Refugees, said in a statement that refugees help address labor shortages and that the program “has been extraordinarily good for America.”
“Dismantling it today is not putting America first,” he said in a statement.
In a related move, the White House said it would move oversight of the refugee support programs from the State Department to the Department of Health and Human Services. 

BOGOTA: Colombia’s left-wing President Gustavo Petro had trouble refueling his plane on a trip to the Middle East after being sanctioned by the United States, his government said Thursday.
Interior Minister Armando Benedetti said that the presidential plane stopped in Madrid to refuel on the way to �������� but that officials at Barajas airport, Spain’s biggest, refused to fill it up.
After negotiations with Spain’s left-wing government, the plane landed at a military base to refuel.
President Donald Trump’s administration has accused Petro of enabling drug cartels and placed him on the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions list.
He, his wife Veronica Alcocer, eldest son Nicolas, and Benedetti are banned from traveling to the United States and any US assets they have are frozen.
US companies or companies with US capital are also banned from doing business with them.
Writing on X, Petro thanked the “kingdom of Spain” for helping him reach Riyadh at the start of a three-country tour that will also take him to Qatar and Egypt.
Benedetti said that the aviation refueling company at Barajas was afraid of breaching US sanctions on Petro.
“The companies that sell fuel or provide cleaning services or the boarding stairs (at airports) are almost always American,” Benedetti said.
“They refused to provide the (refueling) service because of the OFAC (list),” he said, referring to harsh financial sanctions slapped by US President Donald Trump on the leftist Petro, one of his most vociferous critics.
The sanctions imposed on Petro on October 24 followed months of friction between Trump and Petro over US migrant deportations and strikes on suspected drug boats off the coast of South America.
Petro, a former left-wing guerrilla, has vehemently denied any involvement in drug trafficking and argued that the cocaine trade is being fueled chiefly by demand in the United States and Europe.