Authoritarianism in the United States: A Death Knell for the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program

Abstract

One of the United States’ two dominant political parties resembles global political parties favoring authoritarianism. Such directives are expressed through the transformed Republican party’s authoritarian messaging, policies, and many of its member’s behavior. The devastating impact of an energized U.S. authoritarian political party and the narrow narrative of who is and should be in the United States and a U.S. citizen is a necessary discussion following the U.S. 2024 Presidential election. It is foreseeable that an autocratic leader of the U.S. will be catastrophic for refugees, particularly refugees of color and especially refugees in the U.S. South, as the liberal ideals of democracy that undergird the institutions and policies that support U.S. refugee admissions and resettlement are attacked.

1. Introduction

This conceptual article examines how authoritarianism will destroy The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) by eroding U.S. democratic principles, policies, laws, and institutions that uphold it (Beers 2020). Understanding the difference between migrants, immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, and those under temporary protective status is essential to the political discussions around documented and undocumented immigrants and the threat of mass deportations. Labels such as immigrants, refugees, and migrants are used interchangeably in the media, “kitchen table” conversations, and even refugee and immigration policy decision-making processes, especially when discussing the U.S. southern border.1 An explanation of terms is offered to clarify how such terms are used in this article and provide context to this discussion.

The term migrant is an umbrella term for any person on the move. Under U.S. policy, an asylum seeker is already on U.S. territory and wants to remain under U.S. protection. The unique circumstances and approaches to admitting and receiving refugees help distinguish their entrance and presence in the U.S. from immigrants. Immigrants and refugees differ in how and why they leave their home countries. An immigrant is a person who voluntarily leaves their home country to emigrate to another country seeking a better life. Often, immigrants have time to think about their decisions and identify resources, especially family, in the immigration country before they depart from their country of origin. A refugee, however, is a person forced to flee their native land due to their inability or unwillingness to return to their homeland due to persecution based on race, religion, nationality, social affiliations, and civic activities (UNHCR 2010, p. 3; UNHCR|USA 2024).2 The international criteria for refugee status have expanded over the years to include climate change, sexual orientation, development, and natural disasters. As a result, refugees are often identified as forced migrants in keeping with the reason why they flee (Erdal and Oeppen 2020). Once resettled, being identified as a refugee provides access to U.S. governmental assistance and other resources unavailable to migrants.

Refugee identification carries negative social narratives and may draw backlash when receiving or accessing resources (Zetter 1991). However, classifications and the criteria for assigning displaced people such identifiers are how states manage who enters their borders. For political and resource allocation purposes, these terms have different meanings and produce different outcomes for the people they apply to. Indeed, policies addressing U.S. refugee admissions and resettlement fall under broader U.S. immigration policies and procedures. With these concepts and explanations in mind, the discussion begins with an overview of the U.S. refugee admissions program and authoritarianism.

Contextualization of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program and Authoritarianism

According to the UN Refugee Agency or United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, there are currently 43.7 million refugees, including 6 million under the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) (UNHCR 2024a). However, only less than one percent of the world’s displaced people are resettled in primarily Western countries such as the United States. Resettlement is UNHCR’s third durable solution because it involves the most intense separation from a refugee’s home country (UNHCR 2024b; Chimni 2004; Troeller 2002). The first is repatriation to the homeland. The second is blending into the refugee camp or urban area host country (Hovil and Maple 2022). The United States resettles most of the world’s refugees (Opono and Ahimbisibwe 2024). That is why the absence of the USRAP under authoritarianism would cause irreparable damage and disarray.

The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) is a federal government-operated program. The process of identifying, vetting, receiving, and welcoming refugees from around the globe begins on the international level with a UNHCR recommendation to an overseas U.S. Resettlement Support Center (RSC) or U.S. embassy, then proceeds to the national level that includes federal agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of State, and the Department of Health and Human Services. Next, the process moves to the state level, with a state coordinator informing resettlement agencies in that state of the arrival of refugees. To finish, the process ends on the local level, with refugees placed in local neighborhoods (U.S. Department of State 2024c; Crosby 2020, pp. 11–14). A vast network of federal, state, and local agencies, faith-based organizations, resettlement organizations, individuals and refugee organizations, and other non-profits are involved in the bureaucratic process. If the United States transmutes into an authoritarian State, the U.S. refugee admissions and resettlement program is doomed.

Alarmingly, the United States is experiencing an aggressive plunge into dangerous authoritarian governance (Ballard-Rosa et al. 2022). Authoritarianism is a threat to vulnerable groups seeking entrance to the United States. Refugees are among the most vulnerable because they are forced to flee their home countries. Too often, their plight is portrayed in the media or debated in political spaces under the broader topic of migration, disregarding the different circumstances and involuntary reasons refugees are forced migrants. High-income countries such as the United States admit and resettle refugees from around the globe through a complex process. Those processes will be in jeopardy if authoritarianism is implemented in the United States. More importantly, the lives of refugees already resettled will be upended if the authoritarian party (the Republican party) completes its seizure of power by executing its vision for the country found in the manifesto known as Project 2025 (Dans and Groves 2023).

Within this scheme to drastically restructure the U.S. government is a direct attack on immigration. Refugees anywhere in the legal process of resettlement are susceptible to the plans and rhetoric that target immigrants. They risk being swept into mass deportation and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) raids even though they are legally in the United States. Refugees resettled and in the process of coming to the United States risk an indefinite wait to reunite with family members in the United States, still in refugee camps, or urban areas of their first host country.

Drawing attention to the plight of refugees facing U.S. authoritarianism, especially if they fled an authoritarian home government, is essential to contextualizing the terror they face in the next four years. In addition to the policy of mass deportation, there is the brazen threat of another travel ban, notions of populism, Christian nationalism, racism, sexism, Islamophobia, homophobia, xenophobia, and other anti-immigrant policies and dangerous rhetoric. Sadly, U.S. resettled refugees will be retraumatized.

2. History of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP)

2.1. Narrow Definition of a Citizen

Over one hundred years after independence from Great Britain, The United States formed the first immigration service in 1890 (Wasem 2018). The Bureau of Immigration was administered under the Department of the Treasury. This federal agency managed the admission of immigrants, which then included people who, under today’s definition, would be identified as “refugees”. There were no separate laws to address refugee admissions. Therefore, refugees could resettle in the United States if they met immigration requirements.

As a sovereign state in the international system, the United States of America has the right to determine who enters its borders. The decision of who enters the country is decided by those who hold political power. Consequently, foreign policy and political, economic, social, and global preference were given to individuals who would assimilate into a political, economic, and social structure dominated by the fabricated, intentional narrative of male Anglo-Saxon heritage supremacy (Ratcliffe 2013). The exclusive, intentional, systemic concentration of power and resources around a specific group of Europeans began with colonial policies of the 17th Century that forged the permanent labor force of enslaved Africans that allowed the colonies to flourish, evolve into small states, and eventually become the United States of America (Morgan 2018). As a result, a male Anglo-Saxon Protestant Christian identity remains the acceptable description for a U.S. citizen.

2.2. Establishment of Immigration Quotas

Chin and Finkelman (2023) agree that the founders intentionally constructed a government to govern based on their belief in White supremacy when they state that “—whether or not they supported slavery, a majority of them unambiguously conceived of the United States as a White country” (p. 1048). The increasing multiculturalism of the United States threatens that perception. Contemporarily and historically, any identity other than the socially constructed racial category of “white” has been rejected for entrance into the United States. U.S. immigration policies are replete with racially restrictive language to exclude certain groups from entering. For example, The Quota Acts (The Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and the Immigration Act of 1924) established yearly caps on the number of immigrants admitted into the United States from any country. This quota system was used to exclude Jews fleeing the Holocaust from entering the United States. Indeed, these Acts made it easier for northern and western European immigrants to enter the United States and far more difficult for immigrants from other European countries and the rest of the world. The Quota Acts essentially enshrined the narrative of a “preferred immigrant” into policy (Moser and San 2020).

David Wyman (1968) offered what is considered the first academic analysis of the United States’ response to thousands of Jews fleeing Nazi Germany before, during, and after the Holocaust. The Jews seeking refuge were primarily poor and spoke German. His groundbreaking book elucidates the overlapping of very restrictive quotas, the collapse of the economy under the Depression, nativism, anti-Semitism-fueled policies, and social behavior that rejected desperate Jewish refugees. A remedy to that Jewish refugee crisis was the Wagner–Rogers Bill. Introduced by Senator Robert Wagner (D-NY) and Representative Edith Rogers (R-Mass.) on 9 February 1939, the bill would have rescued 20,000 children from the German Reich in 1939–40 and resettled them in the United States. However, the rigid politics of the day and strict adherence to the controlled admittance of the number and narrative of the “preferred immigrant” killed the bill and the hope of a more robust U.S. refugee resettlement of Jews (Wyman 1968).

2.3. The Cold War

World War II wreaked havoc on the political, economic, social, and military of states and the global system writ large. The calamities in the aftermath of the rise and fall of German fascism triggered Western powers to collaborate on the prevention of another world war. From those exclusive talks, the United Nations was established as the successor to the League of Nations. These Post-World War II institutions were formed under the new liberal world order. The United States led this realigned global system (Hsu 2012, p. 15). This system perpetuates the unequal distribution of global resources, promotes the domestic and international agendas of the global North, and creates intergovernmental institutions (such as the UN) to maintain the global status quo in the name of peace. Freedom, equality, justice, and free open markets were the foundation for the spread of democracies and the containment of Communism (Lavenex 2024).3 Likewise, the global refugee crisis of World War II prompted the United States and European countries to develop plans for managing displaced persons seeking entrance into their respective countries. In addition to the government efforts to resettle refugees, Catholic and other faith-based, non-profit, and civic organizations that were already privately involved in assisting refugees with their basic needs were connected to the government’s resettlement process through an Executive Order from President Franklin D. Roosevelt. With Roosevelt’s creation of The War Refugee Board in 1944 and later the Office of Advisor on Refugees and Displaced Persons in the Department of State (now The Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM)), volunteer resettlement organizations could interact with one government agency (Wycislo 1958, p. 133).

President Harry S. Truman issued a directive on 22 December 1945 that authorized the expedited admission of refugees and other displaced persons into the U.S. under existing immigration law. President Truman sent the Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization to Europe to assess the situation and develop a management plan for U.S. displaced persons. As a result, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Department of State, the U.S. Military, Public Health Services, and non-profits collectively assisted over 40,000 displaced persons to enter the United States within the quota system. The president’s directive also allowed approximately 1000 refugees already resettled in the United States to attain lawful permanent resident status or a green card. Three years later, Congress and President Truman signed the controversial and deeply ethnically and religiously prejudiced Displaced Persons Act of 1948. President Truman expressed his disappointment in the inherent discrimination against Jewish displaced persons but said that he signed the act to prevent further delaying the immigration process (Batlan 2023). He stated in the signing speech,

“It is with very great reluctance that I have signed S. 2242, the Displaced Persons Act of 1948. If the Congress were still in session, I would return this bill without my approval and urge that a fairer, more humane bill be passed. In its present form this bill is flagrantly discriminatory. It mocks the American tradition of fair play.”.

(Truman 1948, Statement by the President Upon Signing the Displaced Persons Act)

2.4. European Communist Refugees

The Displaced Persons Act of 1948 provided the blueprint for future U.S. policies and procedures for admitting and resettling refugees. Its procedures and criteria were developed to address the millions of people forced to flee during and after World War II. The 1948 Displaced Persons Act required people to receive medical clearance and have a sponsor residing in the United States before entering. Once in the United States, the roughly 400,000 European immigrants were responsible for identifying housing and securing employment before entering the United States (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2024a). The Act admitted thousands of displaced people from Soviet-dominated Eastern European areas through U.S. visas. Seemingly benevolent, the act still operated under the quota system, which was used to limit the number of displaced Jews. Likewise, a narrow definition of a displaced person prevented anyone living in a Displaced Persons camp after December 1952 from receiving a visa. Such a restrictive definition made Jews forced to flee before the war and who had not yet reached specified allied territories ineligible for resettlement. This criterion was a means to limit the number of Holocaust survivors who fled Germany, entered Poland but faced pogroms (mob violence against Jews), and then returned to Germany after 22 December (Slatt 2001). Political pressure against the discriminatory policy, including Truman’s hefty critique, prompted Congress to amend the Act. The 1948 Displaced Persons Act was revised in 1950 to expand the definition of displaced persons to include German citizens, extended the time in a Displaced Persons camp from 1946 to 1948, and stretched the nationality quota toward more inclusion of the “unpreferred immigrant”. Truman stated in the amendment signing speech,

“IT IS with very great pleasure that I have today signed H.R. 4567, which amends the Displaced Persons Act of 1948. The improvements embodied in H.R. 4567 now bring the American principles of fair play and generosity to our displaced persons program. When I reluctantly signed the Displaced Persons Act of 1948, I did so in spite of certain of its provisions which imposed unworkable restrictions and resulted in unfair discriminations. Nevertheless, I felt it was necessary to make a start toward a resettlement program for these victims of totalitarianism who yearned to live as useful citizens in a free country.

I had no doubt then, and I have been confident ever since, that when the will of the American people was truly expressed, these defects in the program would be corrected. This confidence has been fully justified”.

(Truman 1950, Statement by the President Upon Signing Bill Amending the Displaced Persons Act)

The following year, a global approach to address the post-World War II European refugee crisis occurred in Geneva, Switzerland.

The United Nations created the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) (the UN Refugee Agency) in 1950. This bureau was charged with protecting and caring for forcibly uprooted people. The following year, UNHCR held the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees to explore strategies for European countries to manage uprooted people, especially Jews, migrating throughout Europe seeking refuge (General Assembly of the United Nations 1951; Jackson 1991). This meeting allowed industrialized countries to preserve their autonomy by establishing international rules and processes on who could enter their borders and how those rules would be applied and adhered to in good faith by represented countries. The purpose was to establish acceptable protocols on how sovereign states in the global system managed uprooted people. The summit was a geographically centered approach because forced migration in other parts of the world was excluded from this gathering. One of the prominent outcomes was a criterion that would become the internationally accepted condition to identify a displaced person as a “refugee”. That definition is

“A refugee, according to the Convention, is someone unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion”

(UNHCR 2010, p. 3)

The resulting definition of a refugee and the agreed-upon processes among the represented states were based on the principles of the liberal world order. Ironically, the United States was not a signatory to the 1951 convention. President Truman felt that endorsing the mandate would infringe upon U.S. sovereignty. Nevertheless, significant national refugee policies were emerging.

Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act, also known as the McCarran–Walter Act, over President Truman’s veto in 1952. The legislation consolidated immigration and nationality statutes under the same law for the first time and provided the foundations for current immigration law. Section 207(a)(3) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. § 1157(a)(3) designates the resettlement of refugees in grave humanitarian situations under four categories of Priority. They are as followed: “Priority 1: Individual cases referred by designated entities to the program by virtue of their circumstances and apparent need for resettlement. Priority 2: Groups of special concern designated by the Department of State as having access to the program by virtue of their circumstances and apparent need for resettlement.

Priority 3: Individual cases granted access for purposes of reunification with family members already in the United States. Priority 4: Individual cases from all nationalities who have been referred by private sponsors in the United States and who receive post-arrival support and services from those sponsors” (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services 2024c, 2024f; U.S. Department of State 2024a).

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 removed previous laws barring Asians from immigrating and becoming naturalized citizens while enforcing low quotas by limiting the number of visas issued to them (Marinari 2016, p. 13). These quotas were established by the Immigration Quota Act of 1924, thereby ensuring that most of the immigration and naturalization numbers were Western Europeans (Campi 2004, p. 2). The Act also included the process of parole. Parole authority is a temporary status granted at the government’s discretion to otherwise ineligible persons without a formal admissions process in extreme humanitarian circumstances or if an individual will benefit the country (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services 2024b). With devastating implications, the Act also codified measures and language criminalizing undocumented immigrants. Such expressions of exclusion and fear appear in U.S. immigration law dating back to the Geary Act (27 Stat 25) of 1892. This law authorized the incarceration of Chinese immigrants who failed to register as “aliens”, another enduring, infuriating, intentionally dehumanizing word of U.S. immigration and refugee policy. Likewise, immigration authorities were empowered to arrest, detain, and remand unauthorized immigrants to the federal courts for deportation (Cullison 2020, p. 6).

The backlash against the discriminatory Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 and efforts to resettle refugees fleeing China and other Communist areas prompted the expansion of quotas for non-European immigrants. Between 1953 and 1956, President Eisenhower authorized the issuance of 214,000 non-quota immigrant visas for refugees fleeing persecution in the Soviet Union and other Communist countries, people expelled from East Germany, and displaced persons fleeing natural disasters and military operations (Anker and Posner 1981; Library of Congress 1957, p. 68).

Under the Refugee Relief Act of 1953, faith-based (primarily Catholic) and non-profit efforts to advance more U.S. immigration policy centered on refugees were realized. The law incorporated the recently formed and widely accepted UNHCR criteria for refugee status to the Act’s definition of a “refugee”, “escapee”, and “German expellee”. Also, the “refugee” category explicitly identifies Communism in its criteria for resettling refugees from Communist areas who had not been resettled and needed essential resources or transportation (Library of Congress 1957, p. 68). As the Cold War intensified, the number of refugees in Communist areas increased.

The 1956 failed Hungarian revolution against Soviet Communism generated hundreds of refugees. Fleeing primarily to Austria, the country was soon overwhelmed with approximately 200,000 Hungarian refugees. The international community faced the worst European refugee crisis since the Second World War. Austria was in desperate need of international aid (Zieck 2013). The U.S. provided some relief by issuing the remaining number of visas under the Refugee Relief Act of 1953 to the Hungarian refugees. Between 1956 and 1957, roughly 5000 Hungarian refugees were processed in Vienna by Immigration and Naturalization Service employees. Sympathetic media coverage and public sentiment prompted Eisenhower to use the parole authority in the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952 to resettle 3000 more Hungarian refugees. Eisenhower’s swift action imprinted a presidential approach to global humanitarian situations.

“This expansive use of presidential parole power under the INA set a precedent followed by succeeding administrations to the present day, including the recent Afghan evacuation” (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services 2024d).

Similarly, Congress passed the Azorean Refugee Act in 1958 to address people uprooted because of earthquakes and the 1957 eruption of the Capelinhos volcano on the island of Faial. This was the first legislation addressing people uprooted because of a natural disaster. The United States issued 1500 non-quota visas to the Faialense refugees for U.S. resettlement. The uninhabitable Azore Island forced thousands of refugees to emigrate to the United States in subsequent years (Congress.gov 2008; GovInfo 2008). Soon after, Cuba experienced instability.

The Cuban Revolution of 1959 generated thousands of refugees. Many of them emigrated to the United States. The exodus was so vast that the United States opened the Cuban Refugee Emergency Center in Miami, Florida, in 1960 to process many asylum claims. Receiving Cuban refugees provided an opportune political moment for the United States to antagonize a Communist country aligned with China and the Soviet Union. Although the United States severed diplomatic ties with Cuba in 1961, approximately 58,000 Cuban refugees entered the United States under the parole authority between 1961 and 1962 (Pedraza 2018).

2.5. Non-European Communist Refugees

The 1960s was a violent, volatile decade of political progressivism in the United States. Civil rights movements, legislation, and policies began to reflect the demand for more expressions of U.S. democratic principles in policies, laws, and social behavior. Simultaneously, the Cold War alliances of democracies versus communist countries remained prominent in global politics. Tensions between the United States and Cuba made the coastal waters around Florida a very contentious area. The internal political environment was just as strained as the external political atmosphere. As a result, refugee policies reflected both political pressure points. During the 1960s, more refugees from non-European countries entered the U.S. For example, in 1962, the Hong Kong Parole Program utilized the parole authority to grant roughly 15,000 Chinese refugees entrance into the U.S. (Davis 1998).

The year 1962 also brought significant monetary changes to USRAP with the passage of the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1962. In addition to diversifying and increasing the number of refugees, this Act provided financial assistance to refugees. With this Act, the government augmented the grassroots efforts of volunteer resettlement agencies, faith-based organizations, and non-profits that assisted refugees with securing their basic needs once resettled with much-needed funding. The U.S. was especially open to assisting refugees fleeing Communist countries. The Migration and Refugee Assistance Act also extended conditions of the 1960 Fair Share Refugee Act by granting nearly 20,000 refugees entrance to the U.S. under the attorney general’s discretionary option of parole. In a joint resolution, Congress authorized the attorney general to parole roughly 5000 refugees into the country under that Act. Subsequently, the use of parole authority to address refugee crises increased. Similarly, it was not until 1965 that immigration policies and practices became even more inclusive of non-Western European refugees and immigrants (Dinnerstein and Reimers 2014).

2.6. The End of National-Origin Quotas

Current immigration law was formulated under the 1965 Amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). The INA or Hart–Celler Act—named after the sponsors, Senator Philip Hart (D-MI) and House of Representative Emanuel Celler (D-NY)—was a seminal law that made immigration policy more inclusive of immigrants worldwide, especially Latin Americans and Asians (Dinnerstein and Reimers 2014). The law abolished the 1920s national origins quotas that favored immigrants from Western Europe by limiting the number of immigrants from other parts of the world. Additionally, the INA established a first-time limit on the number of immigrant visas from the Western Hemisphere, which was 120,000 (Heeren 2019). The Eastern Hemisphere immigrant visas were capped at 170,000 (Donato and Amuedo-Dorantes 2020, p. 4). The national origins quota was a longstanding element of U.S. immigration policy to maintain the population’s highest number of Western Europeans, thus remaining true to the founders’ vision of a dominant Western European culture that they viewed as supreme over all other cultures (Greer 2018). Despite significant revisions to the 1952 immigration laws and President Truman’s firm reprimand and veto, the national-origin quota system remained a staple of U.S. immigration law until the 1960s (Quinney 2018, p. 671).

2.7. Expansion of U.S. and Global Refugee Inclusivity

The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s (as in previous decades), demanded that the U.S. begin earnestly aligning its democratic principles and ideals with its policies and practices, domestically and globally. When speaking of liberty, equality, and justice, it must be stated that the U.S. was forged on colonists demanding “liberty” from British colonial rule while insisting on denying generations of enslaved Africans their freedom (Stovall 2021). As a result of the progressive domestic political environment and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act abolished the established immigration policy based on race and ethnicity. Instead, admittance rested on an immigrant’s family connections to U.S. citizens or permanent residents, with some preference placed on the immigrant’s skillset. For example, immediate relatives, such as parents, spouses, and unmarried children under 21, were exempted from the entrance quotas (Chin and Villazor 2015).

Strategically, President Lyndon Johnson extended an open invitation to any Cubans fleeing Fidel Castro’s regime. Very soon afterward, Cuban refugees arrived in steady streams of small boats off the Florida coast. President Johnson responded by creating an airlift program whereby Cubans in the United States could sponsor a relative and apply to have them airlifted into the United States after being screened in Cuba by the INS and again in Miami. In eight years, approximately 260,000 Cuban refugees entered the United States through Miami under the 1965 “Freedom Flights” (Alberts 2005). Furthering Cuban refugee assistance and the growing Miami, Florida, community, Congress passed the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, allowing Cuban refugees who entered under parole authority to become permanent residents after two years in the United States. Internationally, the protection of refugees would expand beyond Europe (Arteaga 2008).

It is widely acknowledged that the INA increased the multi-cultural, multi-racial composition of the United States, thereby forever altering the country’s demographics. The INA was also a landmark law because it established a permanent refugee admissions process by granting entrance to 10,200 to 17,400 refugees yearly (Chishti et al. 2015). An important note is that the UNHCR definition of a refugee established and internationally accepted during the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees was also accepted and formed the basis for the U.S. refugee criteria. As significant as the 1951 convention was, its scope was confined to a European crisis.

The 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees was an addendum to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. Pressure from leaders in Africa and other countries called for expanding the definition of a refugee, as well as the geographical scope and time-based boundaries from the Second World War to other parts of the world. For example, many African countries, such as Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia, and Togo were fighting independence wars against colonial powers, which generated refugees. Although displaced Africans needed the same essential resources as the Jews and others fleeing Germany, Africans were uprooted for different reasons. They also were not in Europe. Therefore, protection and caring for African refugees called for a more appropriate approach to the anti-colonial wars on a different continent (Elie and Hanhimäki 2008). In fact, the 1967 Protocol was so critical to managing the decolonization refugees that it became a cornerstone for the 1969 OAU Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa, a regional refugee document constructed to address refugees in Africa specifically (Abraham 2023). The 1967 Protocol was also politically relevant to the United States.

The United States signed, and the Senate ratified, the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees because of (1) it expanded geographical scope, (2) the perception that being a signatory would bolster the United States’ image and stature as a benevolent global leader, and (3) incorporate all these factors to support U.S. foreign interests and policy (Freiberger 2010). In essence, the United States was in a stronger global position than it was under Truman when he declined to sign the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, the first international pillar of refugee rights. That acknowledged global leadership required international engagement.

State and non-state actors coalesced around the 1967 Protocol to establish the international refugee network operating as the U.S.’s refugee admissions and resettlement program continued to form. Senate ratification of the 1967 Protocol ensured that U.S. national policy was beholden to international refugee laws and mandates. As a result, the INS augmented its policies to align with the critical non-refoulement conditions of the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. Non-refoulement is the principle of not returning refugees to the persecution of the homeland they fled. It is the foundation of international law, refugee rights, and the refugee network. Returning refugees to the country they were forced to flee based on proven persecution could return them to the same or escalated dangers and threats to their lives. To align with non-refoulement, the United States granted asylum to refugees already in the United States through parole, stays of deportation, or adjustments to their status under the 1972 Administrative Asylum Policies.

The continuation of formalizing and codifying U.S. refugee admissions and resettlement program to combat Communism includes the Indochinese Immigration and Refugee Act of 1975 (Marsh 1980). One of the procedural additions required the President to report to Congress on the status of a resettlement plan for refugees. The Act also provided financial assistance and resettlement aid for displaced people. Under this Act, approximately 130,000 refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos were resettled in the United States following the U.S.’s volatile presence in the Vietnam War. The Act represented the government-sponsored efforts to rescue southeast Asians who helped the U.S. as translators, navigators, and other supporters during the highly domestically contested war. During the previous decades, faith-based organizations and religious institutions resettled refugees using their resources. The random hodgepodge of processing, actors, and resources defined how the United States resettled refugees until the Vietnam War. Therefore, Southeast Asian forced migrants were the first group of refugees to benefit from the forthcoming formalized, organized government effort to admit and resettle refugees (Haines 2010).

2.8. Standardization of U.S. Refugee Admissions and Resettlement Program

Another U.S. effort to address refugees occurred in 1977. This is when the INS created the Office of Refugee and Parole to implement refugee policies and focus on refugee crises. Then, in 1979, Senator Edward (Ted) Kennedy (D-MA.) introduced the bill that would lead to legislation standardizing how the United States admitted and resettled refugees. His timely bill was submitted during President Jimmy Carter’s administration (Kennedy 1981).4 Although some may have politically considered former President Carter a centrist in the Democratic Party, his convictions of humanitarianism (which flourished after his presidency) provided the right timing to introduce such a bill. President Carter set the highest refugee ceiling of any administration to date at 231,700 in 1980 (Bensen 2024; National Immigration Forum 2022, p. 3; Shoichet 2024). In other words, the progressive political environment and a humanist in the White House presented a receptive political time to pass legislation codifying the United States’ approach to admitting and resettling refugees.

The 1980 Refugee Act

The 1980 Refugee Act is the foundation for USRAP. The current USRAP became national law under the 1980 Refugee Act. The law is an addendum to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (that removed racial, ancestry, and national origin quotas as barriers to immigration) and The Migration and Refugee Assistance Act (MRA) of 1962 (which authorized the United States to support refugees and other displaced persons financially) (Congress.gov 1979). Also, according to the 1980 Refugee Act, the U.S. President consults with Congress each fiscal year to determine the number of the world’s refugees allowed entrance into the country.

Without question, the 1980 Refugee Act solidified the refugee admissions and resettlement process under the federal government. Before the legislation, multiple non-profits and faith-based organizations helped refugees access resources such as employment, while the government admitted refugees through the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Private and faith-based organizations remained engaged as valuable partners in welcoming refugees into local communities. These organizations were on the front lines of helping refugees adjust to their new lives well before the government brought them under the legalized standardization of resettling refugees. Also, the 1980 Refugee Act formally adopted the UNHCR criteria for refugee status, increased the yearly number of admitted refugees, and created the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to manage the resettlement process and programs as refugees worldwide were resettled (ORR 2024).

The U.S. population became even more of a multi-national state as more refugees entered through the solidifying admissions and resettlement process and those in the country under parole authority. For example, the 1997 Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act allowed some Nicaraguans without permanent status to become permanent residents if they met the requirements. Some deportations were suspended, and some removals were canceled for certain people from Guatemala, El Salvador, and the former Soviet Union. Unfortunately, the same courtesies were not extended to Black Caribbeans.

Haitians fled their country just as Cubans did. However, based on domestic and global politics and racism, Haitian refugees did not receive the same consideration as refugees from Central America. The Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act of 1998 granted Haitian nationals the same opportunity to apply for permanent resident status as the United States offered Central American evacuees under the 1997 Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act. The 1998 Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act 1998 allowed certain Haitian nationals permanent legal residency without applying for a visa (Audebert 2017, p. 62).

The U.S. also treated Haitian refugees differently and more inhumanely than they treated Cuban evacuees (Lennox 1993). The plight of Haitian refugees and their treatment by the United States was constantly engulfed in national, foreign, and global politics. This prejudice was evident in the mistreatment of Haitian refugees fleeing the Jean-Claude Duvalier (“Baby Doc”) regime in small boats headed for the Florida coast. Duvalier’s status as an anti-communist ally influenced how the U.S. addressed the Haitian refugees. Therefore, the Haitian refugees were not afforded the categorization of “refugee”, which would make them eligible under U.S. and international law to remain in the United States. Instead, the overwhelmingly poor and Black nationals were identified as “economic migrants”, placing them outside the definition of a refugee, thereby preventing U.S. entrance. Haitians were placed in detention centers, prisons, and jails as a deterrence to other Haitian displaced people. The Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act 1998 required their release into society and be granted refugee status as a pathway to permanent residency and, finally, citizenship. Years after turning away Haitians, the United States faced an extraordinary event that affected the perception and policies of those who entered the U.S. for decades to come.

2.9. USRAP After 9/11

The Department of Homeland Security is the last agency added to the refugee admissions and resettlement process because it was created in 2002 following the horrific attacks on the United States in New York and Washington D.C. on 11 September 2001. The attacks’ psychological, political, economic, and social fallout heightened national security. The 21st century began with the horrible news of terror on U.S. soil. Most of the population had not experienced the trauma of a war-like attack on U.S. territory. Public fear and anger-supported policy adjustments remain in everyday life, such as additional airport security clearance processes. These hyper-sensitive atmospheres produced immigration policies, such as The Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002 and The REAL ID Act of 2005, aimed at weeding and keeping out anyone seemingly suspicious of infiltrating U.S. borders to prevent another terrorist attack. As a result, immigration policies and practices targeted undocumented immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, those under temporary protective status, under immigration parole permission, and anyone perceived to be a non-citizen (García 2017; Ewing 2008).

Additionally, the backlash against Muslims increased and, in some instances, erupted in violence against Muslim citizens. U.S. sentiment resisted the entrance of Muslim refugees. The attacks inflicted trauma and fear among resettled refugees, immigrants, asylum seekers, persons under temporary protective status, and others without citizenship, as well as citizens who did not fit the “preferred immigrant” profile. Consequently, national and foreign policies, as well as social behavior, began to reflect anti-Muslim and xenophobic sentiments. Islamophobia was fueled by the theme of “white citizens only” that reverberated throughout U.S. immigration policy since 1790. These racial, gender, and national origin immigration policy limitations affected refugees because the USRAP emerged from U.S. immigration and naturalization laws and applications (Hing 2001).

Another restructuring occurred among the agencies involved in the refugee admission and resettlement process in the aftermath of 9/11. In 2002, The Homeland Security Act disassembled the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and divided it into three separate agencies under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS): U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS); U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP); and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In 2003, the powers of the former INS were transferred to the Department of Homeland Security and, ultimately, these three new agencies. Processing refugees through the USRAP is complex and timely, involving several federal agencies. The Department of Homeland Security, The Department of State, and the Department of Health and Human Services are the primary agencies involved in the process after the United States accepts the UNHCR recommendation for resettlement. Within these agencies are the units that implement policies to admit and resettle refugees. They are the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Bureau for Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM), and Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), respectively.

3. U.S. Refugee Admissions and Resettlement Process

The U.S. refugee admissions and resettlement process begins internationally with The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and ends locally with resettlement (See Figure 1). This is the UN Refugee Agency responsible for protecting and supporting all globally displaced people. The UNHCR thoroughly vets anyone claiming they fled their native land and are unwilling or unable to return because of persecution (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services 2024e). After credibility is proven, the UNHCR, a U.S. Embassy, or a well-trained non-governmental organization (NGO) refers the refugee to a U.S. Resettlement Support Center (RSC) under the Department of State (DOS). The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) then conducts a background security check by capturing the applicant’s fingerprint and screening it through the FBI, Department of Homeland Security biometrics, Department of Defense, and other agency databases. If cleared, the Department of State assigns refugees to a resettlement agency. Ten resettlement agencies work directly with the State Department to sponsor refugees. Those agencies are

Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC)

Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM)

Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS)

International Rescue Committee (IRC)

U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI)

Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS)

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)

World Relief Corporation (WR)

Bethany Christian Services

(U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2024b)

The sponsoring resettlement agency then secures an airplane ticket from the International Organization for Migration to fly the refugees under their care to a designated state. Refugees sign a Promissory Note for the travel loan. They must begin repaying the plane ticket within six months after arriving in the United States. Simultaneously, the State Refugee Coordinator assesses and contacts local branches of the ten sponsoring agencies to determine the capacity and available resources. Health screenings occur before and after refugees arrive in the United States. Overseas, medical screenings are coordinated by the Department of State, which selects a panel of licensed medical doctors to examine the refugees. In the United States, the ORR under the Department of Health and Human Services administers the medical tests usually within 30–90 days of arrival in the United States.

The local branch of the sponsoring resettlement agency assists newly arrived refugees with securing housing and employment, enrolling children in school, learning their way around the kitchen, making doctor’s appointments, enrolling in English as a Second Language (ESL) classes, maintaining refugee policy documents and appointments with government agents, providing and preparing food as closely to their culture as possible, and other points toward the ultimate goal of self-reliance. Likewise, the 1980 Refugee Act provides newly arrived refugees with medical and cash assistance up to a year from their date of ORR eligibility.

The USRAP also encompasses federal government procedures for resettling refugees into communities in the United States. Under President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris, the United States established a government-led, grassroots welcoming program called Welcome Corps. Welcome Corps was established in January 2023. This community approach is an attempt to alleviate the substantial responsibilities of resettlement agencies by including people who want to help resettle refugees. Groups of five people are trained on the USRAP and what resettlement entails. The group must raise $2425 per refugee, present a welcome plan, and commit to assisting refugees for at least 90 days (Welcome Corps 2024). The group is paired with a resettlement agency or non-profit to guide them because it essentially performs the same duties as an agency.

The USRAP is an intricately connected network of interagency, non-profit, and engaged individuals collaborating to admit and resettle refugees. The government and grassroots involvement are critical to the multiple processes that are already backlogged. The entire admissions and resettlement process would collapse under authoritarianism because the democratic principles, institutions, government agencies, non-profits, and others that administer the program would be disrupted or eliminated.

4. Rise of U.S. Authoritarianism

Authoritarianism is one type of autocratic government (Loxton 2024). “Countries in every region of the world have been captured by authoritarian rulers in recent years” (Repucci and Slipowitz 2022, p. 1). People around the world have increasingly voted for authoritarian leaders, such as Italy’s right-wing party, which is a modern version of a fascist party under Benito Mussolini (Agnew 2023). According to the 2023 Democracy Index, 59 countries were identified as authoritarian (The Economist Intelligence Unit Ltd. 2024). Juan Linz’s seminal work to differentiate totalitarian, democratic, and authoritarian governments (1964) provided the widely accepted definition and description of an authoritarian regime as one that (1) restricts political pluralism potentially to the point of suppression; (2) replaces ideologies based on rational, organized systems of thought with “distinctive mentalities” that are based on emotions and feelings; (3) includes the absence of “extensive and intensive political mobilization of the population”; and (4) has a leader or small group that exercises power within formally ill-defined but predictable limits (Linz 1964, p. 297).

Authoritarianism can erode U.S. democracy and the general way of life in multiple ways, some of which include (1) governance, (2) rule of law, (3) individual rights, (4) civil liberties, (5) manipulating the economy and controlling the marketplace, (6) eliminating pluralism, (7) discouraging diversity, (8) suppressing cultural expressions, (9) restrictions on social movement and organizing, and (10) decline of U.S. global authority, power, and respect while forming and perpetuating an environment of fear and mistrust toward divisiveness (Henderson 1991). Authoritarian, extreme members of the Republican Party and their base, who operate antithetically to democratic ideals, have overtaken the party (Smith 2019). It no longer resembles a political party that once provided a conservative approach to the structure and governance of a democracy. The previously defining Conservative issues of supporting traditionalism, a strong military, lowering taxes, religious fundamentalism, limited government intervention in addressing and correcting social and economic disparities, and racial, gender, religious, and sexual orientation discrimination were purported without denouncing a democratic state. Even notable, long-standing conservatives such as Liz Cheney have been ousted from the party (Thompson-Devaux et al. 2024). There are even elected officials and ultra-right media personalities speaking favorably about Vladimir Putin. That is why the extreme factions within the former Republican party have morphed it into the “US Authoritarian Party”. Consequently, the electorate must acknowledge with grave concern but democratic resistance that one of the two dominant political parties, led by Donald Trump, is now a full-throated political representation of authoritarianism in the United States.

Disgruntled factions within the Republican Party, sympathizers in the electorate, and wealthy business supporters have always pressed to reverse progressive policies. The Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) decision is a prime example. This was a historic ruling that overturned the fifty-year-old right to abortion established in the Roe v. Wade (1973) decision, thereby eliminating the U.S. Constitutional right to privacy and bodily autonomy, which are deemed by many as violations of a woman’s civil and human rights. Autocratic/Republican leaders in Congress paved the way for the Constitutional attack by ensuring like-minded Supreme Court candidates would be confirmed, to erode democracy by weakening one of its institutions. Revoking civil liberties through foundational documents and liberal principles is one way the authoritarian sympathizers are eroding U.S. democracy. Similarly, the authoritarians’ perceived misdirection and gloomy, dystopian narratives about the current state of the United States are fueled by their resistance to an increasingly multicultural society. Under his second administration, the incoming President and his followers have boldly made their intentions to reshape government and governance public.

Trump’s authoritarianism reflects the pre-ascendency to the power of many past and present authoritarian governments and dictators. Often, men who command attention, loom large in personality, are unyielding to alternative policy positions to theirs, and brutally punish their opposition are the “strong men” viewed as the only people capable of redirecting the country for those who perceive that the state’s policies and political environment exclude them. These men claim they are the sole leaders who can remedy the country’s economic and social problems. Like Hitler, Trump has often said that he is the only person to fix anything his base of mostly older, male, white evangelical, uneducated, rural voters deem wrong (Willenbrink 2021; Cineas and North 2020; Wolf 2019). Not only would authoritarianism destroy the USRAP internally or domestically, but it would also be threatened internationally by the testing of democracies in the global system.

4.1. Eradication of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program

Now that Trump has been elected, it is presumed that he will deliver on his threat to be a “dictator” on day one, thereby dissolving any form of government currently experienced in the United States (Graham 2023). Under authoritarianism, democratic principles, the Constitution, and the rule of law would be manipulated into an unrecognizable government and country. In the worst-case scenario, the Constitution could even be eliminated, and a complete government restructuring would occur. Without the U.S. Constitution, there is no legal basis for acknowledging and adhering to pre-authoritarian legislation. The legal structure that makes the 1980 Refugee Act binding would disappear, which means the 1980 Refugee Act would have no credence. It would be invalid. That means the 1980 Refugee Act would either be abandoned or abolished. Likewise, without a Constitution, there would be no Congress or Supreme Court to reinstate the 1980 Refugee Act because these governing bodies would be dissolved since they are established in the Constitution. Oppositely, if the U.S. Constitution remains but is selectively altered, Congressional seats could be filled with more detractors willing to concede to authoritarianism.

In a different scenario where the Trump administration acknowledges the 1980 Refugee Act, he could end the refugee admissions and resettlement program by lowering the number of refugees granted entrance to zero, or so low of a number that the program would grind to a halt. In the fiscal year 2024, President Joe Biden resettled 100,000 refugees. This was the largest number of refugees resettled in the United States in thirty years, resulting from Biden investing resources and fulfilling a campaign promise to address the system’s insufficiency. By increasing the number of refugee officers, streamlining processes, and bolstering support for the ten sponsoring refugee resettlement agencies the State Department collaborates with to assist with resettlement and the inclusion of grassroots assistance with Welcome Corps, Biden resuscitated the U.S. resettlement program. Secretary of State Anthony J. Blinken acknowledged the administration’s efforts when he said “This is a testament to our successful work to rebuild the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program with help from partners around the world and thousands of Americans across the country who have stepped up to sponsor refugees through the Welcome Corps” (Blinken 2024; Chishti et al. 2024, p. 1). According to The Presidential Determination on Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2025, a report mandated by the 1980 Refugee Act, the Biden administration has designated 125,000 refugee admissions, consistent with Biden’s 125,000 allocations in Fiscal Years 2024 and 2023 (American Immigration Council 2024; U.S. Department of State 2024b). In 2025, Trump can reverse or end this momentum.

A Trump decrease in the number of refugees entering the United States in his first term and a steep reduction in the entry cap for Fiscal Year 2026 would severely diminish the refugee resettlement and welcoming process. Of course, the impact depends upon how large the resettlement agency is and how many resources are available. Small community-based non-profits already scraping for funds would have to lay off all or some of their already limited number of employees. Indeed, some operate with two or three people. In other words, there would not be a need for six or seven case workers if the number of refugees to assist was drastically lowered. Unfortunately, this scenario played out in 2017 under the first Trump Administration. The same attack on the number of refugees allowed entrance will likely occur in the next four years.

Regardless of how it unfolds, any tampering with the U.S. Constitution, immigration and naturalization laws, or Supreme Court decisions on refugees and immigration policies would render the 1980 Refugee Act ineffective, thereby erasing all USRAP traces. As a result, federal agencies critical to the USRAP, such as the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of State, and the Department of Health and Human Services, would cease to exist in their present form. They could be weaponized against refugees or reorganized.

The incoming administration is gearing up to remove as many civil servants as possible and replace them with authoritarian/conservative sympathizers, thereby leaving void institutional memory and functioning of the USRAP (Dans and Groves 2023). Consequently, thousands of refugees and their families would suffer from a complete interruption of the program to reunite them with their families. The ten sponsoring refugee resettlement agencies that work directly with the U.S. Department of State would experience a sharp decrease in government funding for newly arrived refugees and refugees already resettled. A decrease in funding results in a reduction in personnel, which leads to increased backlogs in processing newly arrived refugees and providing critical assistance to refugees already resettled. This nightmare occurred under Trump’s 2017 travel ban. Foreseeably, hundreds of newly resettled refugees who desperately rely on initial government support would not receive it.

Access to federal funds such as the 90 days of cash and medical assistance would cease. This would occur because the federal government would no longer exist in its democratic state. There would be no functioning federal agencies to administer the funds. The Office of Refugee Resettlement would not exist to manage the resettlement of refugees. Therefore, refugees would rely even more on faith-based organizations and non-profits to fill in gaps that resettlement agencies may leave vacant due to diminished operations. The lack of governmental resources would automatically increase the already overwhelming responsibilities of non-profits. The lack of federal and state funds would force most of these organizations to rely even more heavily upon individual donations. However, that financial support could decrease or vanish due to the threat of repercussions by the pseudo-dictator and supporters of the authoritarian government. Assistance, such as helping refugees secure housing, enroll children in school, resume their education, find transportation, understand how to navigate paying utility bills, and other vital services, as resettled refugees adjust to their new lives in the United States, would drastically decline. An authoritarian government would also lack urgency to reunite refugee families. Therefore, the family reunification program would also be defunct.

The elimination of the 1980 Refugee Act would affect family reunification processes by creating a prolonged and perhaps indefinite continuation of families separated while they were fleeing or those remaining in refugee situations. The termination of the USRAP would devastate thousands of families who may have already started the process of reunifying with their immediate family members. The absence of the USRAP certainly would completely stop reunification for anyone who had not yet begun the process. That would eliminate the possibility of family members reuniting with their mother, father, brother, sister, and grandparent. If authoritarianism grips the U.S. government, refugees will undoubtedly suffer.

Trump would immediately implement another travel ban reminiscent of the three-iteration Executive Order, also called the Muslim travel ban of 2017. His ban on refugees and immigrants from six states that primarily represented Muslim countries in Africa and the Middle East is an example of this. Part of the first ban was initially blocked by judges in New York and Massachusetts, followed by Virginia, Hawaii, Washington, and Minnesota. The others are Maryland and the Western District of Washington. Under a second Trump term as president, refugees would be permanently banned from entering the United States, especially refugees from most of the countries in the original ban, given Trump’s ire against and contempt for Muslims. Trump’s hostile, divisive, biased, and dangerous rhetoric toward people from non-European countries would only intensify. His followers in Congress and the “Authoritarian/Republican” base would enthusiastically support the permanent ban, subsequently establishing their preferred society based on white nationalism and white supremacy (Perlman 2017). Once again, refugees would be subjected to a persecuted life, which is why they fled their homeland and are in the United States.

4.2. Mass Deportations

The election of the “Authoritarian/Republican Party” has ushered in an era ripe for its leader to feel invincible (even with democratic resistance) and unaccountable for his actions thanks to the Supreme Court’s granting of immunity to his position (Trump v. United States 2024). Due to the significance of immigration and mass deportations to his campaign, Trump may feel compelled to at least attempt to fulfill his high-agenda campaign promise of mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. As explained earlier, there is a difference in the U.S. criteria and process for admitting refugees and immigrants based on their circumstances and reasons for requesting entrance into the United States. These distinctions are also helpful in understanding the Trump administration’s proposed mass deportations, by revoking and eliminating entrance to the United States through these state categories and through expedited removal and detention as outlined in Project 2025 (Dans and Groves 2023, pp. 140–42, 151).

Although mass deportation under the Trump administration is targeting migrants and undocumented immigrants who violate laws, resettled refugees will get caught up in the fray. Certainly, just looking at a person, there is no way to detect someone who is a migrant and someone who is a refugee. Authoritarianism could manifest as surveillance by authorities or the authorization of citizen policing. Neighbors or even family members could turn on each other by reporting confirmed or suspected undocumented immigrants and migrants, with resettled refugees misidentified, too. Racial or citizenship profiling would be accepted and perhaps rampant. Consequently, this would wreak more havoc upon already stressed communities of color that are unfortunately too familiar with racial profiling. Public demonstrations against the deportations may occur as they did during Trump’s 2017 travel ban. Protests, restrictions on media outlets, and other forms of dissention to the deportations may be crushed, leading to Constitutional violations of freedom of speech and the right to assemble. These acts of repression will signal attacks on civil liberties and individual rights, an erosion in social trust and cohesion that fosters polarization and fear because authoritarianism thrives on division. The impracticality of implementing such a colossal national undertaking creates the window for blurring or dismissing distinctions between refugees and immigrants, documented and undocumented.

The threat of mass deportations returns U.S. immigration policy to the 1790 language and practices of keeping the United States citizenry white. The incoming administration even plans to create stateless persons by deporting migrants arrested in the United States to countries other than their native land within one week of their arrest. Those countries include but are not limited to, Turks and Caicos, the Bahamas, Panama, and Grenada (Ainsley 2024). Regrettably, this is not the first time Trump has negotiated with countries to receive non-nationals. In 2017, during his first administration, he negotiated to send migrants to Guatemala (Torres 2021). Such a large-scale action would disrupt the Caribbean politically, economically, and socially.

Additionally, in 2011, a memo from The Director of ICE, John Morton, instructed bureau personnel to focus on persons that posed imminent threats to national and public safety rather than pursuing undocumented immigrants with close family, military, or educational ties with the United States (Morton 2011). In 2021, President Biden expanded upon that policy by requiring ICE to provide justification and prior notification of securing someone or a raid on “sensitive locations” such as schools, hospitals, and places of worship, including mental health facilities and colleges (Loweree and Reichlin-Melnick 2021). The incoming administration plans to dismiss this policy and unleash ICE to arrest immigrants declared a threat to national security or public safety (Ainsley and Martinez 2024). As a result, those exemptions of safe spaces will devastate communities of refugees, immigrants, asylum seekers, and people under temporary protective status regardless of their legal presence in the country. Families will be torn apart with social, psychological, economic, and political repercussions.

Mass deportations would also disrupt local economies and, ultimately, the U.S. economy when the agricultural, hospitality, construction, and leisure workers are deported. The jobs in these industries do not necessarily require high levels of English fluency, which is one of the reasons why refugees are placed in them by their sponsoring resettlement agency. These are also low-wage, entry-level positions that most U.S. employees find uninteresting or economically dissatisfying. As a result, resettled refugees, migrants, and undocumented immigrants find agricultural, construction, hospitality, and other service-oriented employment accessible. Likewise, resettlement agencies place refugees in similar jobs, such as manufacturing warehouses or meatpacking plants. If resettled refugees are entangled in the “roundup”, many companies that rely on warehouse workers will be affected. Consequently, this impacts the local price of meat and poultry.

4.3. Implications for the State and Local Governments

Extremist views within the Republican (U.S. Authoritarian) Party jeopardize the lives of refugees when they express their resistance to a multicultural society because refugees positively contribute to that multiculturalism. To be sure, immigration is a critical issue for the “Authoritarian/Republican Party” and refugees. That is why the 2024 Presidential Election was a very high-stakes democratic endeavor. Much of the party’s ultra-conservative agenda is implemented in the states. Abortion, immigration, and education have all been addressed at the state level. Repealing laws and ensuring extreme-minded judges and elected officials are placed in state, local, and district positions is a strategy to reverse more inclusive policies.

Now that authoritarians are in office, Trump’s followers in state and local offices will uphold their current draconian policies against refugees, migrants, asylum seekers, immigrants, and people in the United States under temporary protective status. State and local elected officials who follow Trump and subscribe to the discriminatory rhetoric and policies he purports will feel emboldened to propose, pass, support, and enforce more anti-refugee laws. The implications for state and local levels of government also rest on how the new federal government is structured. Undoubtedly, the abandonment of the USRAP would wreak havoc on resettled refugee communities, especially in the South.

4.4. Challenges for Refugees in the U.S. South

Refugees in the southern states would endure negativity more intensely because the South remains a bastion for the narrow perception of an “American” as a white Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, evangelical male.5 These states’ rights states are some of the same states that comprised the Confederacy that seceded from the Union and launched the U.S. Civil War. Then and now, labor, racism, classism, and gender undergird the political struggles and contestations of who belongs in the United States and who owns, controls, and distributes resources; in other words, who has power. As a result, attacks on pluralism and diversity would continue and, in some instances, begin (Ford 1999, p. 713). States on the southern border that already have terrible policies towards migrants, such as Texas and Florida, for example, would feel emboldened to foster even harsher policies towards refugees and migrants under a U.S. authoritarian system. Similarly, preventing social attitudes of resistance, negativity, and prejudice from intensifying would be challenging.

Refugees of non-European descent or those coming from non-European countries must all carve out their new lives within the U.S. caste system, which allocates resources based on race (Wilkerson 2020; Cell 1982). In the U.S. caste system, African Americans have been unwillingly held at the bottom and, therefore, have historically and contemporarily been excluded from accessing resources (Rothenberg 2008). Likewise, African refugees are lumped into the socially constructed racial category of “Black”. Consequently, African refugees are subjected to the same discrimination as descendants of enslaved Africans who built the United States. The lack of government resources would deny resettled African refugees and resettled refugees of other non-European ethnicities, nationalities, and races any recourse for violations of their civil rights as they do under the current U.S. Constitutional democracy.

Under U.S. authoritarianism, state-sanctioned violence against refugees would flourish. Without legal repercussions for terrorizing refugees, white supremacists and white nationalists would feel even more emboldened to express their racism, sexism, Xenophobia, Islamophobia, colorism, and other prejudices against refugees. Nevertheless, a small sector of society aware of the plight of refugees would combat such negativity. Additionally, the social networks refugees explicitly rely upon to access resources as they adjust to their new lives would also be strained. Many networks are formed by established U.S. families or ethnically, religious, and culturally aligned communities. Consequently, those organizations would be targets of state-sanctioned violence and domestic terrorism because of the communities they serve.

Community-based non-profits, like those based on ethnicity or cultural familiarity, would suffer because their financial support comes primarily from private donations and grants. Faith-based organizations may become even more essential because refugees rely on their religion for comfort and hope as they adjust to their new lives (Shaw 2024; Goździak and Shandy 2002). However, faith-based organizations could also become targets of U.S. authoritarianism just because they are focused on helping refugees. U.S. resettled refugees fleeing war and violent conflict would feel as if the place that promised safety and the opportunity to carve out a better life was now another place of persecution. They would be further ostracized, marginalized, and targeted for state-sanctioned torment.

From a religious or spiritual perspective, anti-refugee narratives, policies, vicious rhetoric, and violent social behavior towards refugees (and un/documented immigrants) contradict the compassionate religious teachings of Christianity and most other religions. From a Christian perspective, a powerful base and controller of the U.S. extreme-conservative playbook, largely represented in the U.S. South, there is a Biblical account that speaks directly to the modern definition and causes of refugees. Isaiah 16:3 describes the situation where the Moabites flee a massacre of their people. They are forced to flee to their neighbor and enemy, Judah, for protection. Their requests are made in the Christian Standard Bible (CSB) version with the words, “Give us counsel and make a decision. Shelter us at noonday with a shade that is as dark as night. Hide the refugees; do not betray the one who flees” (Aspray 2021). There is a sharp departure by professed Christians in the Republican Party (Authoritarian) from this Biblical principle. To be sure, this is not the first time Christianity has been manipulated to justify racism, violence, and terror in U.S. history. Nevertheless, resettling refugees into hostile environments is always concerning.

Donald Trump has pledged to lift restrictions on local authorities and ICE. He has emboldened the person he selected as the “border czar”, Tom Homan, who said, “We’re going to take the handcuffs off ICE” (Lu 2024). That means refugee communities would once again have to endure the terror of being randomly picked up and families ripped apart because of arrests and inhumane detention holdings that would be reminiscent, if not worse, than, what occurred with the ICE raids under Trump’s first administration. ICE raids decimate families and whole communities. For example, in 2017, during Trump’s first administration, in Clarkston, Georgia, a Somali father was picked up on his way home from work (Belzer 2017). The Somali community had to rally around his family and contribute what little funds they had to help his wife pay utilities and purchase food and other resources for her and the children. Likewise, Cuban and Haitian communities in Florida will be resoundingly crushed.

Additionally, refugee contributions to society through the arts may be banned alongside an increase in the barring of literature that reveals varied lived experiences in the U.S. in southern schools. Imagine the disappointment and frustration. An authoritarian regime would represent the ultimate betrayal of refugees. A government fueled by fear, prejudice, elitism, nativism, white nationalism, and white supremacy is a dangerous one for refugees from cultures of color.

4.5. Welcome Corps Vanishes

There is a difference between resettling and welcoming refugees, although they are inextricably connected (Crosby 2020). In January 2023, President Joe Biden’s Administration launched Welcome Corps. Welcome Corps aims to relieve some government backlogs in the procedures for welcoming refugees into local neighborhoods once the government brings them to the United States. Under the leadership of the Department of State and the Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. government created a privatized program to alleviate that procedural strain. Under Welcome Corps, people are asked to come together in groups and financially support refugees by providing the services that many of the resettlement organizations perform, such as providing furniture for an apartment, helping enroll adults in English as a second language, or ESL, class, showing refugees how to navigate a grocery store, and other activities vital to settling into a new life in the United States.

Including people in the process of welcoming refugees is not new for other resettlement countries such as Canada. Welcome Corps is not only a program necessary for the government to welcome refugees; it is an opportunity for communities to participate. Under Trump’s authoritarianism, how refugees are welcomed into their communities would vary. Supportive individuals would probably lead the effort to ensure refugees receive vital resources. Those opposed to refugees might express their resistance, ranging from subtle to violent. Some individuals and groups of all ages may be encouraged to reject refugees in their neighborhoods. The environment Welcome Corps was meant to address socially will be tainted by the negativity and harsh resistance to refugees already present in some pockets of society. Similarly, state-sanctioned social behaviors that promote resistance through local and state political rhetoric and policies would become the norm.

4.6. The Threat to Citizenship

Citizenship is a legal and social concept. It revolves around meeting the legal qualifications for citizenship and a feeling of belonging (Bloemraad 2006, p. 1). For example, when someone is a citizen of the United States, they access resources based on their legal status as a citizen. However, political policies and social behaviors may be biased against citizens based on ethnicity, nationality, religious affiliation, or any other identity that makes them feel like outsiders. Being treated or categorized as “different” or the “other” means that the feelings of belonging to the United States may be absent. At the same time, the legal basis of being a citizen is Constitutionally grounded. Currently, citizenship is enshrined in the 14th Amendment; however, the Trump administration is gearing up to challenge the Constitutional precedent for determining citizenship. That is authoritarianism dismantling democratic laws, principles, documents, and policies and drastically altering the legal and social confirmation of citizenship with the feeling of belonging reserved for Whites.

Conditions for bestowing U.S. citizenship are critical to USRAP. U.S. citizenship provides access to resources only attained after refugees live in the United States under permanent residency status for at least five years. Such criteria are rooted in the conditions established under the Naturalization Act of 1790. The legislation was the first U.S. law to narrowly define standards for a naturalized citizen as any “free white person” with at least two years of residency on U.S. territory or its jurisdiction. They had to be of “good character” and swear allegiance to the Constitution. Children in the United States under the age of 21 automatically gained citizenship with their naturalized parent/s, as did children born abroad to U.S. residents (Library of Congress 1790, pp. 103–4; Anker and Posner 1981; Chin and Finkelman 2023). The 1790 Naturalization Act also enshrined racist policies into naturalization by excluding enslaved Africans and their descendants and immigrants of other races with the definitive phrase “free white person”. Such exclusionary language emphatically defined who was deemed a citizen and who was not. This narrow interpretation of citizenship and pathway to citizenship through naturalization would become a consistent element of U.S. immigration and naturalization law that ultimately impacts refugees.

4.6.1. Naturalization

Resettled refugees must apply for permanent residence after the first year in the United States. After the fifth year, they are eligible for citizenship. Becoming a naturalized citizen is roughly a ten-step process. Applicants must meet certain criteria and complete mountains of paperwork in their language (if offered) but submitted in English. In addition to the five years of U.S. residence (only three years for spouses of citizens), an applicant must be 18 years old, have resided in the application state for at least three months, pass a test on speaking, reading, and writing basic English, pass a test on U.S. history, and take an oath of commitment to the U.S. Constitution. The criteria are based on The Immigration and Nationality Act 1965. The ten-step process is managed by the USCIS. It begins with determining citizenship status, then preparing, submitting, and paying for the N-400 Naturalization form. Next, the applicant fulfills the biometrics appointment provided by USCIS before sitting for a USCIS interview. USCIS notifies the applicant if they passed the English and U.S. history test. If the result is positive, meaning the applicant passed the N-400 form, then USCI issues a date, time, and location for the applicant to participate in a naturalization ceremony. The Notice of Naturalization Oath Ceremony, or N-445 Form, is a questionnaire that begins finalizing the naturalization process. At this formal procedure, applicants must relinquish their Permanent Resident Card and The Oath of Allegiance is administered (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services 2024a). Taking the Oath is the formal completion of the naturalization process. However, the current legal security of being a naturalized citizen is in jeopardy again under a stronger authoritarian mandate and plan.

4.6.2. Denaturalization: Right to a Rite

Naturalization, like natural-born citizenship, is firmly grounded in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (Hashemi 2023). Regardless of this fact, Trump advisors and authors of Project 2025 have threatened to attack legally naturalized citizens in their mass deportation plans (Lubet 2024). Denaturalization is a legal matter brought before a federal court. The federal government accuses a naturalized citizen of inadvertent or intentionally attaining their citizenship fraudulently. The outcome is that the naturalized citizen is stripped of their citizenship. Denaturalization is not new, though it is rare (Gavoor and Miktus 2015). Nevertheless, Trump targeted naturalized citizens during his first term (Qureshi 2020; Lind 2018). His plans to drastically alter how citizenship is defined and determined harken back to the 1790 foundational immigration idea that a U.S. citizen was a free white male. Every subsequent naturalization law sought to maintain that profile.

The fact that authoritarian decision-makers now want to remove birthright citizenship engrained in the 14th Amendment, along with denaturalization, serves as a means of severely reversing the inclusivity of the naturalization laws. As a result, the country is predominantly “White” again. Indeed, the continued increase of multiculturism in the United States has been projected in a negative narrative to constantly stoke fear of Whites being outnumbered and, consequently, denied access to resources and a loss of power through the democratic process of free, fair, and frequent elections.

4.7. U.S. Removed as Top Country of Refugee Resettlement

If USRAP ends or is drastically halted, the United States will no longer be the top refugee resettlement country, even if that number still only reflects less than five percent of all the world’s refugees were resettled in 2023 (UNHCR 2024c). The onset of U.S. authoritarianism would usher in the immediate elimination of democratic principles and the refugee policies that reflect them. Likewise, the previous immigration and naturalization acts that opened the doors for more refugees from diverse ethnic, geographical, racial, and religious backgrounds would be negated. Consequently, the refugee admissions and resettlement program would be in grave jeopardy.

A loss of refugee resettlement leadership under a U.S. authoritarian government would mark the second time the Trump administration removed the United States as the top country of refugee resettlement. The first slippage occurred in 2018 when Canada replaced the United States as the top refugee resettlement country based on the number of refugees resettled (Radford and Connor 2019). In stark contrast to all of his predecessors, every year of his term, Trump slashed the number of refugees resettled in the United States. In 2018, 2019, and 2020, the cap plummeted under him from 45,000 to 30,000 to 18,000, respectively (Chishti et al. 2024). The drastic decrease from previous administrations was an unmistakable signal of his attempt to eradicate USRAP (International Rescue Committee 2020). Given his anti-immigrant rhetoric, the inclusion of a callous Border Czar in his administration, campaign promises of mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, and his previous pattern of drastically decreasing the refugee cap, it is safe to presume that the second Trump administration will repeat that pattern.

4.8. Dismissal of the Guiding Principles of USRAP and Refugee Resettlement

Refugee rights and protections are rooted in international law. International refugee rights and protections rest within the globally accepted universal human rights laws under the current liberal world order (Hathaway 2005). Acceptance and adherence to such ideals are present but waning in the world. Although the liberal world order is contentious, the democratic principles of the international system are critical to providing context to state and non-state actors aiding and protecting refugees. The liberal principles of human rights and the inclusion of global institutions to resolve conflicts are present in foreign policies of democracies like the United States. Without a global system of states that agree to abide by the universal principle of human rights, the United States would find it difficult to operate its refugee admissions and resettlement program due to the reduction in international resources to maintain the refugee regime (Ikenberry 2011; Betts 2010). U.S. authoritarianism supported by an authoritarian world order or a weakened liberal one would severely hamper democratic institutions because the principles and funding from the United States to support them would decrease or end. Then, as now, “Critics say that Trump has abandoned a longstanding U.S. role as a safe haven for persecuted people and that cutting refugee admissions undermines other foreign policy goals” (Heavy et al. 2020).

4.9. Loss of U.S. Global Leadership

Authoritarian governments (and illiberal democracies) can drastically affect USRAP by backing internal entities working to erode democratic principles, practices, and institutions that support goodwill among people and governments (Zakaria 1997).6 Undoubtedly, U.S. authoritarianism would destroy U.S. credibility and weaken its position as a global leader. If authoritarianism continues to spread globally, and domestic policies of humanitarianism give way to nativism, populism, and isolationism in more countries, refugees and all the world’s globally displaced people face more closed borders and harsher reinforcement of those closures. Refugees already within the state’s borders could endure brazen, biased, socially injurious behavior, continued negative narratives, and state-sanctioned violence against them. Also, international financial support could decrease for intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations working to protect and resettle refugees.

Without democracies, and their resettlement programs, such as USRAP, refugee resettlement would drastically decline. As a result, the United States’ standing among other democracies would diminish greatly. U.S. allies would question U.S. global leadership, non-democracies would sense the U.S. democratic demise, and autocrats would claim victory. The willingness of other democracies to continue to uphold the refugee network minus U.S. leadership is a point of great concern. Therefore, the U.S. remaining a democracy has global implications for the international aspect of USRAP.

5. Conclusions

The ambitious political project called the United States of America is under attack. The democratic ideals of liberty, equality, justice, and the universal concepts of human rights, civil rights, truth, and honesty are being overridden by hyper-suppression, greed for power and money, loss of integrity, and the consolidation of power into an authoritarian state led by a pseudo dictator. As of this writing, the U.S. and global liberal ideals exist simultaneously under a global system where flawed, complicated, hypocritical, and tested democracies remain relevant as manifestations of humans controlling their own destinies. For example, the world is watching whether democracy emerges in Syria with the toppling of the Asaad regime. Meanwhile, under the Trump Administration, the fragility of the U.S.’s democracy under the weight of authoritarianism is being carefully monitored on the world stage, especially by U.S. allies. This conceptual article concentrated on the devastating implications for refugees with the transmutation of the United States from a democratic to an authoritarian state and the end of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. Hopefully, this bleak outlook for the USRAP will not come to fruition. To prevent such a catastrophe, the United States must remain an imperfect yet constructive democratic work in progress. There are millions of refugees depending on it.