Daily State of Play: Trump’s Indefinite Refugee Ban and Funding Halt


March 12, 2026

The Trump administration’s indefinite refugee ban, stop work orders and prolonged delays in reimbursement for resettlement agencies have had a devastating impact on tens of thousands of refugee families and communities across the country and around the world. Welcome to the latest edition of State of Play from Church World Service. This resource will provide regular updates from the CWS Policy Team on the current state of play; updated asks for national, state and local leaders; and the latest headlines and community resources. Subscribe now to receive daily updates on the latest developments and ways to support impacted communities.

   

Afrikaner emigres want to return home, despite Trump administration’s claim of “white genocide.” Yesterday, South Africa’s Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber told Reuters that 1,000 people abroad have reclaimed their citizenship, with 12,000 more checking their eligibility since November. This trend followed the repeal of a 1995 law that had stripped citizenship from some South Africans who emigrated. The scale of return migration undercuts the Trump administration’s rationale for exclusively prioritizing white South Africans for refugee resettlement, falsely claiming that they are being persecuted as a minority in the country. 

One man, who moved to the U.S. in 2003 after being robbed at gunpoint in South Africa, hopes to move back, saying: “People are being shot in broad daylight. American citizens are being shot and killed. I don’t want to live in a place like this.”

After the Trump administration set a record-low admissions target of 7,500 people in October and reserved the slots primarily for white South Africans, CWS President and CEO Rick Santos said that “the White House is shamefully abandoning those refugees in crisis situations who have already been vetted and approved for resettlement in the United States.” 

Thousands of refugees and asylees stripped of their livelihoods in trucking industry. The Trump administration’s targeting of immigrant truck drivers is worsening labor shortages and cutting off critical pathways to safety and economic stability for refugees and other newcomers. An estimated 9,500 commercial drivers–including truck, school bus, and sanitation drivers–have already been removed from the roads for English-language violations, despite immigrant drivers making up roughly 17 percent of the workforce. 

One Russian family who came to the United States as refugees that spent more than a decade in the industry was forced to leave after ICE ramped up enforcement at truck stops and weigh stations, making it challenging to retain drivers. In addition, a new final rule will bar refugees, asylees, asylum seekers, DACA recipients, and humanitarian parolees from holding commercial driver’s licenses. The rule threatens the livelihoods of an estimated 200,000 people. 

DACA recipient Jorge Rivera Lujan, asylum seeker Aleksei Semenovskii, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and Public Citizen are seeking to pause the rule before its March 16 effective date. You can read several refugees’ and other immigrants’ success stories in a comment CWS and other organizations jointly submitted opposing this rule. 

Labor unions and immigrant service organizations sue USCIS for sweeping discriminatory policies. Last week, labor unions and immigrant service organizations challenged four U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) policies that have left millions of immigrants in legal limbo: the indefinite pause on affirmative asylum adjudications; the freeze on immigration benefit applications for people from countries targeted by the travel bans; the re-review of approved benefits; and the instruction that immigration officers treat a person’s country of origin as a negative factor when determining benefits. These policies have arbitrarily blocked asylum seekers from protection, prevented immigrants from renewing work permits or receiving green cards, and destabilized immigrant communities across the country. The plaintiffs argue that USCIS’ actions violate the Administrative Procedure Act, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the Constitution by replacing the legal immigration system Congress created with discriminatory, indefinite restrictions.

You can read statements from plaintiffs Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island, Refugee Dream Center, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW), African Communities Together (ACT), Venezuelan Association of Massachusetts (VAM), Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans (PANA), and American Gateways and co-counsel Democracy Forward, Lawyers’ Committee for Rhode Island, Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), Muslim Advocates, and South Asian American Justice Collaborative (SAAJCO) here.