Donald Trump’s administration admitted zero refugees to the United States for the first time since records began. Pictured right are protesters on the steps of the US Capitol Building in Washington DC (Pictures: AP)

The United States government admitted no refugees last month for the first time since records began.

Advocacy group World Relief said October 2019 was the first month in 30 years that the US government failed to allow a single refugee to resettle.

The US was the world’s leading refugee resettlement destination until Donald Trump became president in 2017.

It had previously resettled more refugees than all other countries on Earth put together, but began slipping down the ranks in the first year of Trump’s presidency.


Resettled refugees are those people who have sought asylum from another country, and who ultimately hope to become permanent residents of their host nation.

A protester is pictured at Portland International Airport in Oregon. President Trump was condemned for railing against refugees coming to the US from ‘shithole countries’ in Africa (Picture: AP)

The Los Angeles Times reports that the zero figure for October was partly because of bureaucratic reasons.



Hundreds of refugees who had been cleared for arrival were held up by the delayed signing of an order by Trump aimed at limiting refugee numbers to just 18,000 a year.

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The president finally signed that order on Friday, with those refugees now expected to begin arriving in the US from Tuesday.

In 2016, the administration of then-President Barack Obama set the resettled refugee ceiling at 110,000 people. That plummeted to 45,000 in 2018 and 40,000 in 2019.

Trump was elected to power after promising a crackdown on immigration, including promises to build a wall spanning the United States’ southern border with Mexico.

But critics say his stance has harmed the world’s most vulnerable people who are in desperate need of safe sanctuary.

He sparked fury in January 2017 after signing a ‘Muslim-ban’ executive order which barred entry to the US to travelers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

That ban has since been largely overruled, but new restrictions it also imposed on prospective refugees have been upheld.

Trump has repeatedly been branded racist, and was condemned in January 2018 for railing against immigrants coming from ‘shithole countries’ in Africa.

And in July this year, he suggested four ethnic minority congresswomen – including Somali refugee Ilhan Omar should ‘go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.’

There are believed to be around 70 million displaced people in the world, with human rights groups condemning the United States’ new restrictions.

Melanie Nezer, from humanitarian organization HIAS told The Nation: ‘We’re in the midst of the largest refugee crisis in recorded history.

‘So the number really should be going up, not coming down.’

And Omar Mohamed from Pennsylvania-based nonprofit Church World Services said Somali refugees were distraught by the United States’ new attitude when he recently visited a Kenyan refugee camp.

He said: ‘The question they ask me: “What have we done to the president…?

‘What did the immigrant people do to this administration?”‘