Ranking Members Raskin, Durbin, Padilla Press DHS Secretary on Refugee Admission During Refugee Consultation with Congress
The Trump Administration provided minimal details on a plan to abandon American values and focus solely on admitting more white-only Afrikaner refugees
WASHINGTON – U.S. Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD-08), Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee; U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee; and U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA), yesterday pressed U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin on the Trump Administration’s uncertain refugee policies during an annual, statutorily required refugee consultation for Fiscal Year 2027. The meeting occurred as the Trump Administration announced a plan to welcome up to 17,500 White Afrikaners from South Africa as refugees over the next year.
During the meeting, Durbin urged Secretary Mullin to process more refugees from around the world, including our Afghan allies stranded abroad.
“The Trump Administration’s agenda is clear: prioritize white-only Afrikaners as refugees and disregard the millions of men, women, and children from around the world who are trying to escape horrific violence and persecution,” said Durbin. “Although we finally heard directly from a Cabinet official on this Administration’s refugee policies, unlike the last consultations, as the law requires, the Trump Administration is doing everything possible to attack our immigrant communities. We must restore our longstanding asylum policies and admit lawful refugees—including the Afghan allies who served alongside our troops abroad.”
“Yesterday’s consultation reinforces our sense that the Administration has turned America’s traditional refugee program into a whites-only airplane ride for South African Afrikaners into Trump’s America. Afghan allies who risked their lives fighting alongside our troops, religious minorities facing intensified persecution in Iran and tens of thousands of approved and pre-vetted refugees fleeing war from around the world have been left twisting in the wind for years. But white Afrikaners get the Elon Musk presidential red-carpet treatment. America should offer race-neutral asylum for people fleeing tyrants and war, but Donald Trump is stiff-arming families we promised to protect and turning a humanitarian lifeline into another exercise in political favoritism and racial exclusion,” said Raskin.
“Welcoming a thoughtful number of refugees every year is part of our nation’s legacy and an important international obligation. Yet the Trump Administration has all but closed the door on people fleeing persecution and natural disasters, even leaving behind Afghan allies who fought alongside U.S. service members and have now spent years in the resettlement pipeline,” said Padilla. “Meanwhile, the Administration is aggressively pursuing the deportation of refugees, asylum seekers, TPS holders, and green card holders to countries we know are unsafe and have questionable human rights records. It’s un-American and flies in the face of our longstanding commitment to being a beacon of freedom in the world. The Administration must restart refugee resettlement to a respectable and honorable level.”
In May, Durbin, Raskin, and Padilla, along with U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-WA-07), Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement, released a statement after a consultation on the Trump Administration’s emergency refugee admissions plan to increase the refugee cap included only deputies, not Cabinet-level representatives as the law requires.