Trump sets 7,500 annual limit for refugees entering U.S. It’ll be mostly white South Africans

Afrikaner refugees from South Africa holding American flags arrive, May 12, 2025, at Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Va. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is restricting the number of refugees it admits annually into the country to 7,500 and they will mostly be white South Africans, a dramatic drop after the United States previously allowed in hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war and persecution from around the world.

The Republican administration published the news Thursday in a notice on the Federal Registry.

No reason was given for the numbers, which are a dramatic decrease from last year’s ceiling of 125,000 set under Democratic President Joe Biden. The Associated Press previously reported that the administration was considering admitting as few as 7,500 refugees and mostly white South Africans.

The memo said only that the admission of the 7,500 refugees during 2026 fiscal year was “justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest.”

The slashed cap represents another blow for the long-standing program that until recently has enjoyed bipartisan support.

Trump suspended the program on his first day in office and since then only a trickle of refugees have entered the country, mostly white South Africans. Some refugees have also been admitted as part of a court case seeking to allow entry to refugees who were overseas and in the process of coming to the U.S. when the program was suspended.

The administration announced the program for the Afrikaners in February, saying that white South African farmers face discrimination and violence at home. The country’s government strongly denies this characterization.

Across the country groups that work to help resettle newly arrived refugees into the country have had to lay off staff as the number of people arriving under the longstanding program plummeted.

Rebecca Santana, The Associated Press