Act Now to Stop Re-Vetting of Refugees and Restart the Refuge

Join us in petitioning the administration and the Department of Homeland Security to stop infringing on the promises made to lawfully present refugees and re-open the refugee resettlement program to persecuted Christians and others fleeing credible threats.

World Relief & Refugee Resettlement

World Relief has worked with the federal government and with thousands of local churches since 1979 to help resettle refugees in the U.S. as a part of its mission to partner with the church to engage the world’s greatest crises. The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, which was established with strong bipartisan support in 1980, has long been a vital legal pathway to safety for refugees. For decades, this program has offered people facing persecution because of their religious beliefs, political opinions, race or other grounds protected under the law, the opportunity to begin their lives anew and enjoy the freedoms we value in safety.

Since January 2025, the U.S. Refugee Admissions has been effectively suspended. The current refugee ceiling has been set to a historic low of 7,500, with only a small population of South Africans eligible for the program. According to World Relief’s 2024 report with our partners at Open Doors U.S., an unprecedented 120 million people worldwide have been forcibly displaced, many of whom are Christians who faced persecution on account of their faith. As defenders of international religious liberty, we are concerned by an attempt to limit refugee resettlement. Refugee resettlement has played a vital role in protecting Christian brothers and sisters from persecution and death, along with those persecuted for other reasons.

Reinterviews Predicted

In November, World Relief received news of a new policy to re-interview refugees who were lawfully resettled in the U.S. over the last 5 years. Approximately 230,000 individuals, including over 17,600 who were resettled by World Relief, who have already fled the worst wars, conflict and persecution imaginable and gone through rigorous vetting overseas — a process involving robust interviews, background checks and medical reviews that can often take a year or longer — are now being threatened with re-interrogation and the possibility of deportation. Most of these individuals have only recently found refuge and the opportunity to rebuild their lives here in the United States.

Operation PARRIS Launches

Starting in early January in Minnesota, ICE agents began rounding up lawfully present refugees, including children, relocating them out of state for interrogation and detention. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has called this action Operation Post-Admission Refugee

Reverification and Integrity Strengthening (Operation PARRIS). As of right now, the use of detentions under Operation PARRIS has been stayed by a federal judge, but we remain concerned about the harms of re-vetting thousands of lawfully admitted and resettled refugees.

This initiative is inhumane and un-American. It subjects our newest neighbors to unnecessary and retraumatizing scrutiny, leading many to fear that they will be returned to life-threatening situations. While it is reasonable to reexamine an individual's case if credible concerns arise, we reject the premise that all refugees who arrived recently need to be reexamined. Forcing all refugees resettled during this period to undergo new scrutiny is unnecessary and generates profound fear among people who have done everything our government has asked of them.