By Staff Reporter
BUFFALO — For the second year running, the United States will take in no more than 17,500 refugees, and the White House has directed that those places go mainly to one group: Afrikaners, the white minority descended from Dutch and French settlers in South Africa.
The fiscal 2027 presidential determination, signed Sept. 25 and published in the Federal Register on Oct. 2, says admissions “shall primarily be allocated among Afrikaners from South Africa pursuant to Executive Order 14204.” It also keeps in force the January 2025 order that suspended refugee entry except for cases the secretaries of State and Homeland Security jointly approve.
For Buffalo, one of the country’s best-known resettlement cities, that means the pipeline that once brought hundreds of refugees at a time to Western New York stays almost closed for another year.
A refugee program reshaped around a foreign-policy dispute
The Afrikaner preference grows out of the administration’s fight with Pretoria. Executive Order 14204, signed in February 2025, is titled “Addressing Egregious Actions of the Republic of South Africa.” It directs U.S. agencies to prioritize resettling Afrikaners it describes as victims of “unjust racial discrimination,” according to a July Congressional Research Service brief.
In May 2026, President Donald Trump issued an emergency determination raising the fiscal 2026 ceiling from 7,500 to 17,500. He cited “recent increases in the incitement of racially motivated violence on the part of the Government of South Africa and leaders of prominent political parties in South Africa,” CRS reported. South Africa’s new ambassador to Washington, himself an Afrikaner, has said there is no “white genocide” in his country, The Guardian reported.
The administration defends the policy as humanitarian. “President Trump has provided a lifeline for Afrikaners, who are being raped, maimed, killed, and driven off their property across South Africa,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly told The Guardian. A State Department spokesperson said the administration is “prioritizing the resettlement of Afrikaners in South Africa who are escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination.”
The numbers
The United States admitted 16,292 refugees in fiscal 2026, which ended Sept. 30, The Guardian reported. All but five were South African. Through June 30, all but three of the 7,730 refugees admitted were South African, according to CRS; the others were Afghan.
Two years earlier, President Joe Biden set the ceiling at 125,000. The United States admitted 38,102 refugees in fiscal 2025, almost all before the suspension took effect in January 2025, and they came from more than 65 countries, CRS found. Since 1980, presidents of both parties have set an average ceiling of about 92,000, the resettlement agency Global Refuge says.
Church World Service, one of the national resettlement agencies, says more than 120,000 refugees from over 90 countries who had been conditionally approved are now stranded.
Resettlement agencies object
“The annual refugee cap is a statement of national character, and today’s signals to the world that our nation’s promise of opportunity, safety, and shelter for the vulnerable no longer hinges on humanitarian need alone,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge. She urged Congress to use “every tool of oversight at their disposal.”
Rick Santos, president and CEO of Church World Service, called on the president and Congress to uphold “the Refugee Act of 1980’s central legal and operational principle of humanitarian concern by prioritizing refugees at greatest risk rather than limiting this program to a single population.”
The International Rescue Committee, headquartered in New York City, pointed to Afghans who worked alongside U.S. forces. “The U.S. resettlement program should welcome the world’s most vulnerable — Afghans who risked their lives to support the American mission in Afghanistan, persecuted religious and ethnic minorities, and refugees separated from family members left behind in danger,” said Hans Van de Weerd, the IRC’s senior vice president for resettlement, in a statement.
What Buffalo has already lost
Buffalo’s agencies felt the suspension within days. In February 2025, a coalition of Catholic Charities of Buffalo, the International Institute of Buffalo, Jericho Road Community Health Center, Journey’s End Refugee Services and Jewish Family Services of Western New York launched a $1.5 million crisis fund.
“On January 24th, we received a stop work order that told us we would no longer be funded to provide critical services to the 731 refugees that arrived in the past 90 days here in western New York,” Molly Carr, CEO of Jewish Family Services, said at the time, WKBW reported. Journey’s End and Jewish Family Services both laid off staff.
Dottie Gallagher, president and CEO of the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, framed resettlement as economic policy. “Investing in refugee resettlement is investing in our economy,” she said then. “It is how we are going to grow.”
The federal government is still funding some work with refugees who are already here. On Oct. 7, Rep. Tim Kennedy announced a $62,500 Office of Refugee Resettlement grant to extend the Westminster Economic Development Initiative’s microloan program, which has helped 105 refugee and newcomer businesses since 2022. WEDI also runs the West Side Bazaar.
“Refugees and new Americans bring ambition, skill, and strong determination to build a better future for themselves and their family, and a small business is one of the best ways to help them put down roots here in Buffalo,” Mr. Kennedy said in a release.
What to watch
Congress has no vote on the ceiling. The Refugee Act requires only “appropriate consultation” with the House and Senate Judiciary committees before the president sets it. Lawmakers do control the money for resettlement, now run by the Department of Health and Human Services, in budget talks that face a Dec. 11 deadline.
For Buffalo, the questions are practical. Will any of the 17,500 places bring new arrivals to Western New York? Can local agencies keep their caseworkers and interpreters through another lean year? And will families here who have relatives among the stranded applicants have any way to request an exception? The International Refugee Assistance Project says the government has not explained how one could qualify, and that dispute is still in court.
Featured image: Vendors at Buffalo’s West Side Bazaar, then on Grant Street, in 2014. The incubator for refugee and immigrant entrepreneurs, run by the Westminster Economic Development Initiative, now operates on Niagara Street. Photo by Andre Carrotflower via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
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