Persecuted For Your Faith? You're On Your Own

Long before the United States had a refugee program, religious refuge was part of the American story.

Puritans crossed the Atlantic to escape restrictions on their faith. Quakers fled imprisonment and persecution in England. Catholics sought sanctuary in Maryland. In 1654, twenty-three Jewish refugees arrived in New Amsterdam after Portugal reconquered Dutch Brazil and brought the threat of the Inquisition with it. Pennsylvania and Rhode Island later became particularly important havens for religious dissenters.

The record was never as clean as the national mythology. Some Puritans who escaped persecution proceeded to persecute religious dissenters themselves: four Quakers were executed in Massachusetts between 1659 and 1661. America has spent much of its history arguing over just how widely its promise of religious liberty should extend.

For Christians, the image is older still. Matthew’s account of Jesus’ childhood begins with Joseph taking Mary and her baby into Egypt to escape Herod’s violence. Jesus later made welcome of the outsider personal: “I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (Matthew 25:35).

Centuries later, that idea acquired an American symbol.

Emma Lazarus wrote “The New Colossus” in 1883 after working with Jewish refugees who had fled antisemitic violence in Russia. Her poem recast the Statue of Liberty as the “Mother of Exiles,” lifting her lamp beside a “golden door.” Those words were added to the statue’s pedestal in 1903 and helped transform a monument originally associated with liberty into a symbol of refuge and welcome.

Today, thousands fleeing religious persecution have filled out forms, found American sponsors, submitted to background checks and waited for years.

Then the legal pathway dissolved from beneath their feet.

What Happened to “Do It the Right Way”?

“Do it the right way” is one of the most familiar responses in America’s immigration debate.

Don’t cross the border illegally. Follow the rules. Get in line. Apply from abroad and wait your turn.

That is precisely what refugees applying through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program were doing.

Refugee resettlement is different from illegally crossing the border, and it is also different from reaching the United States and requesting asylum. Refugee applicants generally seek protection while still overseas. The process has historically included interviews, biometric checks, security screening involving multiple federal agencies, medical examinations and sponsorship arrangements before the person ever boarded a plane.

On January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order essentially suspending all refugee admissions. He also directed the Department of Homeland Security to stop making decisions on refugee applications, except when the secretaries of State and Homeland Security jointly determined that admitting a particular person served the national interest and posed no threat.

Trump’s order offered a direct defense of the suspension: “The United States lacks the ability to absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees, into its communities.” It cited pressure on public resources, safety, security and assimilation.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has since ruled that federal law gives the president broad authority to suspend refugee processing. The court also recorded the scale of the consequences: more than 128,000 people had already been conditionally approved for refugee status when Trump took office.

One Group Still Welcome

The refugee system did not stop functioning for absolutely everyone.

Less than three weeks after suspending the broader program, Trump signed another executive order directing federal agencies to prioritize Afrikaners, a predominantly white ethnic and linguistic community in South Africa, who the administration said faced racial discrimination.

Trump has described their situation in particularly stark language.

“It’s a genocide that’s taking place,” he said in May 2025.

The White House argues that South African laws disadvantage Afrikaners in employment, education, business and land ownership, and that violent rhetoric has contributed to attacks on white farmers. South African officials, independent researchers and some Afrikaner organizations dispute the claim that white South Africans face genocide.

What is clear is that the Trump administration made a different policy choice for this population.

Trump set the fiscal year 2026 refugee ceiling at 7,500, the lowest annual ceiling in the modern program’s history, and ordered that those places go primarily to Afrikaners. In May, he raised the ceiling to 17,500, with all 10,000 additional places allocated to Afrikaners.

Democratic lawmakers accused the administration of “prioritizing white-only Afrikaners and betraying everyone else.” The administration maintained that the admissions were justified by an unforeseen humanitarian emergency.

The comparison complicates the instruction to “wait your turn.” For most applicants, processing and admissions were suspended.

The question is no longer simply whether refugees followed the rules. It is why following those rules still produces a path for one group but not for others.

The "Golden Door" Closes

A new report from World Relief and Open Doors US, two Christian organizations that advocate for persecuted believers, concludes that fiscal year 2026 is on track to become the first year in at least a quarter century, and possibly in the history of the modern refugee program, in which the United States resettles no refugees fleeing religious persecution.

Because nearly every refugee admitted this year was South African, and the only three admitted from elsewhere were Afghans who did not belong to persecuted religious minorities, the organizations say it is reasonable to conclude that religious-persecution admissions were effectively halted.

The difference is particularly notable because Trump made religious persecution a formal resettlement priority during his first term and told persecuted believers that they had “a place in the United States of America.”

During his first term, the United States admitted more than 53,000 Christian refugees from countries where believers face severe persecution. In fiscal year 2026 of his second term, that figure fell to zero.

Now, Christian organizations are asking him to restore that pathway.

The Pastor Who Made It Through

Pastor Ara Torosian knows what that pathway once offered.

Torosian, a Christian, was arrested in Iran after bringing Bibles into the country. He eventually reached the United States as a refugee through the Lautenberg program, became a citizen and now leads a Farsi-speaking congregation at Cornerstone Church in Los Angeles.

“America did not ask me to stop being Iranian; it gave me the freedom to stop being afraid,” Torosian said when the new report was released.

Things look much different for him and his congregation today.

In June 2025, federal agents detained two Iranian Christian asylum seekers from Torosian’s church at their Los Angeles home. A woman suffered a panic attack and began convulsing as officers restrained her. The Department of Homeland Security said the couple had been flagged for national-security concerns.

Torosian began telling his congregants to remain home rather than attend church. Some, he said, were locking themselves inside. Watching masked officers restrain one of his church members left Torosian asking, “Am I on the streets of Los Angeles or the streets of Tehran?”

Those church members sought protection through the asylum system, a different legal process from the one Torosian used. That is part of his point. The Lautenberg refugee route he once used had become unavailable, leaving persecuted Iranians to search for other ways to reach safety.

Last year, Torosian challenged federal officials to “show me any legal way for Iranian refugees to enter this country.”

For many religious-minority applicants still overseas, no functioning refugee route has replaced the one that closed.

The Lautenberg Lifeline

The Lautenberg program began as a bipartisan response to a particular history of religious repression.

Congress first authorized it in 1989 at the urging of Senator Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat and the son of Jewish immigrants. Its original purpose was to help Jews and other religious minorities escape the Soviet Union. Rather than asking every applicant to prove an individualized history of persecution, it recognized that members of designated groups already faced a documented pattern of religious repression.

In 2004, the Specter Amendment expanded those protections to Iranian religious minorities, including Christians, Jews, Baha’is, Zoroastrians and Sabean-Mandaeans.

Applicants still needed an eligible relative or sponsor in the United States. Iranian applicants had to provide documentation of their religious identity. They underwent government interviews, medical examinations and extensive security screening. Admission was never automatic.

Because the United States and Iran have no diplomatic relations, Iranian applicants were processed through a State Department-funded center in Vienna operated by HIAS, the Jewish refugee organization. Between 2001 and 2025, the center helped more than 33,000 Iranian religious minorities reach the United States.

The facility closed in early 2026 after the Trump administration terminated its federal funding. More than 14,000 Iranian religious-minority applicants were still in the pipeline.

What Happens to Them Now?

The current applicants are not sitting together in an Austrian refugee camp. According to Church World Service, they remain in Iran.

Many have American relatives or sponsors expecting them. Some have been waiting for years. Their files may contain religious documentation, family records and evidence already gathered for their cases.

HIAS no longer has access to those records and cannot provide individual case updates. It now directs applicants and their American relatives to contact the State Department or their representatives in Congress.

Congress continues to authorize the Lautenberg program, but under current executive policy it remains non-operational for these families. The Ninth Circuit has largely answered the question of presidential authority. The human question centered around the fate of these refugees remains:

They did it the right way. Now that the right way is closed, are the world's religious refugees simply on their own?