The United States is on course to complete the current fiscal year without resettling a single refugee who fled their country because of religious persecution, a prospect Christian aid agencies say would mark a break from at least a quarter-century of practice.
Refugee advocates trace the shift to a series of Trump administration decisions that first slashed and then redirected the nation’s refugee admissions, beginning with a presidential determination issued in late 2025 that cut the ceiling for fiscal year 2026 to 7,500 people, the lowest in U.S. history. That order designated white Afrikaners from South Africa as the primary focus of admissions, describing them as victims of “illegal or unjust discrimination” and directing that most slots be allocated to this group and a small number of others deemed administration priorities. A subsequent revision this spring raised the overall cap to 17,500 by adding 10,000 more South African refugees but left in place language that keeps the program closed to those who meet the traditional definition of refugees fleeing persecution over faith, race or political opinion.
At the same time, a key pathway for religious minorities has effectively been frozen. The Lautenberg Program, a long-running initiative that offered a route to safety for persecuted religious communities including Iranian Christians, has admitted no new cases since January 2025, despite being reauthorized by Congress for fiscal 2026. HIAS, a Jewish-led refugee agency, reports that the administration has shuttered the Resettlement Support Center in Austria that long processed Lautenberg cases, along with related offices in Croatia and Israel, leaving more than 14,000 Iranian Jews, Baha’is and other religious minorities who had counted on the program stranded. The 2026 annual report of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom estimates that about 130,000 conditionally approved refugees remain in limbo, including roughly 15,000 registered Iranian Christians, Jews and Baha’is who no longer have a functioning pathway to the United States.
Christian and interfaith organizations have responded with unusually sharp criticism. A coalition of faith groups convened by the Interfaith Immigration Coalition condemned the refugee ceiling as an “all-time low” when it was announced, warning that prioritizing a narrow group of predominantly white South Africans while shutting out people fleeing war and persecution betrayed longstanding U.S. commitments to protect the vulnerable. An evangelical body in the United States similarly urged the administration to reconsider, arguing that a focus on Afrikaners and the exclusion of persecuted Christians, Muslims and other religious minorities upended decades of bipartisan refugee policy. The government’s own religious freedom watchdog has joined the chorus; in its 2026 report, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom faulted refugee and asylum restrictions for obstructing the resettlement of people facing faith-based persecution and highlighted the historically low 7,500 cap and the tens of thousands of refugees now stuck in limbo.
For Iranian-American pastor Ara Torosian in Los Angeles, the policy changes are more than numbers on a page. Torosian arrived in the United States in 2010 as a refugee through the Lautenberg Program after spending two years under house arrest in Tehran and is now a U.S. citizen. He pastors a Farsi-speaking congregation at Cornerstone Church in West Los Angeles, where many members either fled religious repression in Iran or are still seeking asylum in the United States. In recent years he has staged a hunger strike and spoken publicly about the detention of Iranian Christians by U.S. immigration authorities, telling reporters that several congregants and hundreds of other Iranian believers nationwide have been held in ICE custody. As faith-based agencies warn that no new refugees fleeing religious persecution are being admitted this year, Torosian has voiced concern that the door that once opened for him is closing for those still living under threats from security forces and courts in Iran.
New data compiled by Christian refugee advocates underscore the scale of the reversal. One recent report by two Christian aid organizations estimates that fiscal 2026, which ends Sept. 30, is likely to be the first in at least 25 years in which no refugees facing religious persecution are resettled in the United States. Another analysis notes that the country resettled more than 100,000 refugees in 2024, just 11,500 in 2025, and fewer than 6,000 so far in 2026—all of them from South Africa. World Relief’s Matthew Soerens, a veteran of evangelical refugee advocacy, said he is “quite confident” that zero Christian refugees from countries known for persecution will come to the United States as refugees this year, down from more than 29,000 such arrivals two years ago. While Congress has renewed the Lautenberg Program and consultations on refugee policy continue, faith-based agencies say there is still no indication that the administration plans to reopen resettlement to those fleeing religious persecution, leaving churches, advocacy groups and stranded applicants waiting to see whether the current trajectory will change.