(RNS) — 5.4 million people became refugees in 2025. With the global total eclipsing more than 35 million refugees — not including the 69 million internally displaced persons — resettlement remains a vital lifeline for the most vulnerable communities.
For more than four decades, the U.S. has been on the front lines of that process. But in 2025, the U.S. only resettled 11,500 refugees, a sharp drop from the more than 100,000 in 2024. In 2026, the number so far is less than 6,000 — all of them from South Africa.
As the U.S. welcomes individuals from all over the globe to celebrate the world’s game, most refugees remain largely shut out.
This Saturday (June 20) is World Refugee Day, celebrated by the U.N. since 2001. In light of ongoing changes to U.S. immigration and refugee policy, we asked faith-based resettlement organizations what communities of faith should know about current U.S. refugee policy.
The U.S. refugee program has been devastated in recent years.
Matthew Soerens. (Photo courtesy of World Relief)
The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, a bipartisan effort established in the wake of the fall of Saigon, has all but been gutted. Some of the most vulnerable communities in the world are now barred from seeking entry into the United States.
But many Christians are not aware, said some of the major faith-based refugee resettlement agencies.
“The average person in the average church I go to has no idea that the refugee resettlement program has been shut down,” Matthew Soerens, vice president of advocacy and policy for World Relief, told Religion News Service.
The change in policy has meant these agencies have had to make major staffing and programming adjustments. Some of them have had to survive the termination of significant U.S. grant funding. But more importantly, they say, the change has felt like an abandonment of these needy communities.
During the first Trump administration, the number of refugees admitted to the U.S. was cut drastically, leading resettlement agencies to cut staff and reduce programs. Those programs were rebuilt during the Biden administration, only to be shut down again when Trump returned to office.
In fiscal 2026 (which began Oct. 1, 2025), the vast majority of refugees who have been resettled are white Afrikaners, a minority community from South Africa. Persecuted Chr …