Origins and Consequences of the Trump Administration’s Humanitarian, Refugee, and Immigration Policies, by Kerwin, Carlson and Wheeler in J. Migration and Human Security

 Read it and weep:(

The Origins, Consequences, and Uncertain Legacy of the Trump Administration’s Humanitarian, Refugee, and Immigration Policies: A Comprehensive Analysis, Journal on Migration and Human Security, by 
Donald Kerwin, Elizabeth Carlson, and Charles Wheeler  

"Executive Summary: This paper documents and analyzes the origins, consequences, and uncertain legacy of the second Trump administration’s humanitarian assistance, refugee, and immigration policies. Its first section introduces the administration’s signature policies, which both build upon and sharply depart from those of recent administrations, Republican and Democratic. Its second section recounts how nativist language and tropes centered Donald Trump’s rise and return to power, and how they inform the administration’s refugee and immigration agenda. Its third section discusses the laws and jurisprudence that laid the groundwork for these policies. It outlines the growth in immigration enforcement spending and authorities over multiple presidencies. In addition, it highlights the first Trump administration’s refugee and immigration policies, and describes the sweeping executive orders (EOs) that inaugurated the second Trump administration. The fourth section examines the legal theories offered in support of the administration’s policies, how they have fared in U.S. courts, and the effects of these policies on targeted populations, U.S. families, businesses, and communities. The fifth section sets forth several themes that unify these policies:
•    A highly selective and instrumental view of the rule of law.
•    Cruelty as a guiding principle and strategy.
•    Hostility to programs and policies intended to benefit the poor and persecuted, regardless of their status.
•    The failure to address neuralgic problems in the U.S. immigration system or to pursue humanitarian, refugee, and legal immigration policies that serve the nation’s values, needs, and interests.
 

"The paper urges a return to fundamental American values and commitments. It concludes with detailed recommendations to guide the development of strengthened and integrated U.S. humanitarian, refugee, asylum, and immigration policies. "

 

And, from the introduction:

"President George Washington hoped the fledgling nation would become a “safe & agreeable Asylum to the virtuous & persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong” (Washington 1788). The Trump administration indefinitely suspended, dismantled, and brought to a virtual standstill the U.S. refugee resettlement program. This program revitalized U.S. communities, saved more than three million lives, offered hope to desperate persons throughout the world, and enhanced the nation’s standing (Kerwin and Nicholson 2021). The administration also vowed to review the cases of and re-interview refugees admitted under the Biden administration, and to suspend consideration of applications for lawful permanent resident (LPR) status by refugees and their family members who entered during this period (American Immigration Lawyers Association [AILA] 2025). Its subsequent Operation Post-Admission Refugee Reverification and Integrity Strengthening (“Operation PARRIS”) entailed warrant-less entries, searches, apprehensions, detention in abusive conditions, and extreme vetting of already vetted and resettled refugees.¹

The second Trump administration also foreclosed legal access to the United States by asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border, suspended adjudication of pending asylum applications, terminated the removal proceedings of asylum-seekers (placing them in expedited removal), and removed many to perilous conditions (Human Rights First and RAICES [HRF and RAICES] 2026, 3, 10, 17).

Past administrations supported time and place restrictions on access to the U.S. asylum system, particularly in response to large numbers of border crossers, but no administration (prior to the Trump administration) made “physical presence” in the United States “a prerequisite” to seeking asylum at a U.S. port-of-entry.² As an additional barrier to pursuing an asylum claim, the administration imposed multiple fees on asylum-seekers (a first) and increased fees for temporary status on humanitarian grounds,³ To address the high volume of pending asylum cases, the administration could have taken steps to remedy the conditions displacing so many people and it could have built the infrastructure to adjudicate asylum cases expeditiously and fairly. It did not take either of these steps.

The administration also stripped temporary protected status (TPS) and humanitarian parole from an estimated 1.5 to 1.6 million persons (Bustillo and Martinez-Beltrán 2025c; Figueroa 2025). In doing so, it subjected legally present residents to deportation and possible return to their own troubled nations or to third countries where they had no ties and faced multiple perils. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has targeted, among other groups, beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, who arrived in the country as children (García 2026). It has detained persons who should never have been placed in removal proceedings, such as those with pending visa petitions and humanitarian parole (HRF and Raices 2026, 5). While properly credited with reducing illegal migration, by one estimate the administration has cut 2.5 times more legal than illegal entries (Bier 2026a). The former includes asylum seekers, refugees, immigrant (permanent) visa recipients, and temporary visa beneficiaries, such as the spouses and fiancés of U.S. citizens, international students, and workers (ibid.).

President Ronald Reagan (1989), channeling John Winthrop, called the United States a shining “city on the upon a hill . . . teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace,” a city with doors “open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.” On January 14, 2026, the U.S. Department of State (DOS) announced it would pause visa processing from seventy-five countries, bringing to ninety-three the number of nations (a large number of them African) facing full or partial bars to admission (DOS 2026a; Bier 2026b). DOS (2026c) justified these bars as necessary to ensure that immigrants would not become a public charge or unlawfully use benefits (DOS 2026b). For legally present non-citizens, the administration has constructed a “paper wall” of administrative requirements and barriers that seek to prevent mostly low-income immigrants from advancing to permanent residence and citizenship."