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refugees
'More People Will Die': Sotomayor Reads Searing Dissent as Supreme Court Lets Trump Block Asylum Seekers
The liberal justice lamented that the majority ruling in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado empowers the Trump administration to slam the door shut on refugees "even if the asylum seeker is certain to be persecuted, or killed."
Jun 25, 2026
The US Supreme Court's right-wing majority on Thursday affirmed the Trump administration's deadly policy of blocking people legally seeking asylum from entering the United States in a ruling that prompted liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor to take the rare step of reading her dissent from the bench.
In Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, the justices reversed lower-court rulings, including a 2024 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel decision that people approaching authorized border entries are arriving "in" the United States under federal law.
The Trump administration had asked the Supreme Court to rule on the practice of "metering," by which US authorities limit the number of asylum seekers who can present themselves at a port of entry each day to request protection. The policy was first implemented during the Obama administration and expanded during President Donald Trump's first term, with US Solicitor General D. John Sauer calling it “a critical tool for addressing border surges and for preventing overcrowding at ports of entry along the border.”
“In ordinary English, a person ‘arrives in’ a country only when he comes within its borders,” Sauer argued in court filings. “An alien thus does not ‘arrive in’ the United States while he is still in Mexico.”
Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote for the majority—Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Clarence Thomas, and Trump-appointed Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—agreed.
“In ordinary speech, no one would say that a person ‘arrives in’ a place—for example, a house, a city, or a country—before the person enters that place," Justice Samuel Alito said.
“We hold that an alien who is standing in Mexico does not ‘arrive in the United States’ by attempting, and failing, to set foot in this country," he added. "An alien ‘arrives in the United States’ only when he crosses the border."
Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined a scathing dissent penned by fellow liberal Sonia Sotomayor. Jackson also dissented separately. In a sign of her vigorous objection to the ruling, Sotomayor took the rare step of reading parts of her 35-page dissent—which is nearly twice as long as the majority opinion—from the bench.
"The Court today holds that the Executive Branch may circumvent all these mandatory procedures by having US immigration officers stand at the border and physically block noncitizens from setting a foot onto US soil," Sotomayor began. "They may do so even if the asylum seeker is at the threshold of a port of entry designated to receive all noncitizens who seek entrance into the country. Even if the port of entry has ample capacity to inspect that person, including an available asylum officer trained to process asylum applications. Even if the asylum seeker is certain to be persecuted, or killed, if she is turned away."
Sotomayor noted that metering "created dire humanitarian conditions at the border."
As US Customs and Border Protection "turned back more and more asylum seekers who had traveled treacherous distances to reach that point, makeshift camps sprung up on the Mexican side of the border, with tens of thousands of those turned away waiting days, then weeks and months, for asylum processing that often never took place," she continued.
Sotomayor noted the dangerous conditions in the border camps, asserting that "those turned away under the metering policy also found themselves subject to the very 'persecution and crime' they were fleeing," and citing cases in which people waiting in Mexico were murdered, raped, kidnapped, and assaulted. She detailed instances in which desperate asylum seekers, including children, drowned while attempting to swim across the Rio Grande into the United States.
"Hundreds of others have met a similar fate, and many more died crossing the desert along the southern border, all making 2020 and 2021 some of the 'deadliest years for migrant crossings' in various regions of the southern border," Sotomayor wrote.
"The words of a statute must be read in their context and with a view to their place in the overall statutory scheme."
"The majority’s conclusion focuses almost exclusively on the word 'in' within the phrase 'arrives in the United States,'" Sotomayor stressed. "If that were all this case were about, the majority might have the better of the argument. Statutory interpretation, however, requires much more."
"The words of a statute must be read in their context and with a view to their place in the overall statutory scheme," she continued, pointing to one of the most frequently cited principles in modern US jurisprudence.
"The majority’s interpretation of 'arrives in the United States' makes no sense," Sotomayor argued. "To start, the majority ignores that 'arrival' and 'arriving' in the immigration context have never focused on the precise location of a noncitizen’s feet."
She continued:
Imagine a movie theater policy that states, “Anyone who arrives in the theater may buy a ticket and all moviegoers must have their tickets scanned before entering.” If a person walks up to a ticket booth located just outside the theater, it would be unreasonable to think they could not buy a ticket under the policy because they are not “in” the theater yet. Perhaps the policy could have been clearer by using the preposition “at,” but everyone understands, from context, what the policy means.
Context leads to the same conclusion here. Requiring an asylum seeker to plant a foot across the border to become an “applicant for admission"... might be plausible looking at the words “arrives in” in a vacuum, but it makes a hash of the statutory scheme overall. Instead, construing text in context, an asylum seeker can be fairly said to “arrive in the United States” for purposes of being an applicant for admission and seeking asylum when she walks up to a port of entry and physically presents herself to an immigration officer who is standing on US soil.
Sotomayor further noted that the modern asylum system "developed in response to the international moral reckoning that followed the Holocaust and World War II," when the United States and other indifferent nations turned back shiploads of desperate Jewish refugees and denied asylum to Jews fleeing almost certain death in Nazi-occupied Europe, including the family of famous diarist Anne Frank.
The dissenting justice highlighted the ill-fated voyage of the M.S. St. Louis, which carried over 900 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. After being refused docking in Cuba, the United States, and Canada, the ship returned to Europe, where hundreds of its passengers were killed during the Holocaust.
"Congress passed the Refugee Act in 1980 because it did not want this country to repeat the mistakes of its past," Sotomayor said. "Yet if the refugees on the M.S. St. Louis were to walk up to a port of entry on our southern border today, the majority’s interpretation would allow immigration officers to refuse even to consider their asylum applications by physically blocking them from stepping foot onto US soil."
"The majority’s interpretation permits the government to do that even if the refugees complied with all applicable laws and regulations, even if the port had ample capacity to inspect them, and even if turning them back would result in the very persecution from which they narrowly escaped," she added. "The consequences of today’s decision are predictable. More people will die."
In another extraordinary move, Alito followed Sotomayor's reading by defending the metering policy as necessary for maintaining "orderly and humane" conditions at the border. He then moved on to his next opinion, which upheld the Trump administration's cancellation of temporary deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians.
Responding to the Mullin ruling, Al Otro Lado executive director Erika Pinheiro said, "We believe that today’s ruling violates international law, as well as the express intent of Congress, which enshrined the rights and obligations of the Refugee Convention into US federal law over 40 years ago."
"For decades, the United States has allowed individuals and families who are fleeing persecution, torture, and death to ask for protection at US borders and exercise their legal right to seek asylum,” she continued. "This decision has destroyed the United States’ position as a global leader in promoting the rights of refugees and threatens to serve as a dangerous justification for other countries that unlawfully prevent refugees from crossing borders in search of safety."
"In a world of increasing conflict and climate disaster, this hardening of borders to keep out the most vulnerable is sure to result in many more lives lost," Pinheiro added.
Today, the Supreme Court delivered a devastating blow to asylum rights in the United States.In a 6-3 decision in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, the Court ruled that the Trump administration may turn back asylum seekers at ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border.
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— American Immigration Council (@immcouncil.org) June 25, 2026 at 9:32 AM
Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America’s Voice, also issued a statement, contending that the two rulings "will devastate women and children who are fleeing unimaginable danger, vetted workers who have been in the US for decades making significant contributions, senior citizens who depend on their healthcare providers for lifesaving care, and business owners who rely on their workers to sustain their businesses, among many others."
Congresswoman Analilia Mejia (D-NJ) said that "whether denying asylum seekers the chance to be heard or ripping Temporary Protected Status away from families who have spent years building their lives in this country, this corrupt court, beholden to an authoritarian-like president, once again chose politics over the Constitution."
"Asylum seekers deserve the opportunity to have their claims heard before the government decides their fate," she continued. "Above all else, this case is simply cruel and denies humanity to our fellow human beings seeking safety."
"These rulings should alarm every American," Mejia added. "When the government can deny one group a hearing or strip away protections they have relied on for years, it is not just immigrants who lose. It sends a dangerous message that constitutional rights can be discarded whenever those in power find it politically useful."
Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said that by targeting asylum, the justices "are preventing the most vulnerable people from even seeking safety on our shores."
On social media, Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) said, "This extremist Supreme Court just gave Trump the green light to block asylum seekers at the border and end TPS protections for Haitians and Syrians."
"People fleeing danger deserve compassion, not cruelty," Lee added. "We must reform and expand the court immediately."
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On World Refugee Day, Support Refugees, Don't Deport Them
The US dropped the bombs that forced Southeast Asian families to flee and is now deporting them back to the very land that is still littered with American bombs.
Jun 20, 2026
I was only an infant when my family slipped into a weathered wooden boat under the cover of darkness in 1978. Our journey across the mighty Mekong River was wrapped in an eerie, suffocating stillness as my parents, older brother, and I fled Laos. Whenever my mother recounts that night, she always ends with the same whispered awe: “It is a miracle you and Alex didn’t make a sound. I was terrified we wouldn’t make it.”
It would be decades before I fully grasped the terror of that treacherous crossing, the complex geopolitical forces at play, and the shared history between the US and my birth country that forced us out into the night.
I think of that river escape every year on World Refugee Day. It is a day to honor the immense courage of those forced to flee everything they know. For me, it is also a day that demands a deeply honest look at how we treat people once they arrive on our shores.
Following the violence that consumed Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam in 1975, millions fled, culminating in the largest refugee resettlement in American history. We arrived first through sponsorship programs, and later through the Refugee Act of 1980, laying new roots across the US. Today, our Southeast Asian American community has grown to over 3 million, with vibrant enclaves from California to Minnesota, and my home here in Ohio.
Instead of tearing families apart here at home, the United States must commit to fully funding the removal of unexploded ordnance in Laos until the job is done.
My family is one of the lucky ones. After years of hardship, Columbus welcomed us and helped us plant our roots. Today, I am full of gratitude for my parents' sacrifice, and we are proud to give back through family businesses we built and by serving on nonprofit boards like the annual Columbus Asian Festival and Legacies of War.
Not every story mirrors ours.
Many Southeast Asian refugees were resettled in severely under-resourced, over-policed neighborhoods without the support necessary to heal from the invisible, lingering wounds of war. Forced to navigate poverty and systemic barriers, some young refugees became entangled in the criminal justice system. Decades later—long after they have served their time, rehabilitated, and built families—they are being subjected to a cruel double punishment.
Since 1998, over 17,000 Southeast Asians have received deportation orders. Many have lived here for decades; the United States is their chosen home, and often the only home they have ever known. Once someone is deported, there is almost no way back, severing families permanently. These policies do not make America safer. They merely manufacture new trauma, uprooting lives all over again.
The tragic irony of these deportations is impossible to ignore. We are sending refugees back to a country still littered with the very weapons that drove their families into the dark to begin with.
Laos remains the most heavily bombed country per capita in history. From 1964 to 1973, in a covert effort to destroy traffic along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the US dropped at least 2.5 million tons of ordnance across 580,000 bombing missions. That is the equivalent of a planeload of bombs falling every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years. Even today, unexploded ordnance continues to claim civilian lives, with children making up over 60% of those harmed.
True accountability requires a different path. It requires cleaning up the remnants of war that America left behind in Laos and honoring the humanity of those who survived it. For decades, US programs have addressed these lasting legacies. These efforts not only save lives and support vulnerable communities, but they also bolster years of diplomatic progress in a region of immense strategic importance. Foreign aid is not charity—it is a strategic investment for our country. US assistance in Southeast Asia consistently garners bipartisan support precisely because it yields clear, tangible benefits: enhanced safety, economic stability, and strengthened bilateral cooperation.
Instead of tearing families apart here at home, the United States must commit to fully funding the removal of unexploded ordnance in Laos until the job is done. I urge members of Congress to join the UXO and Demining Caucus and support legislation like the Southeast Asian Deportation Relief Act. We must end this cycle of displacement and keep our communities whole.
The United States was forged by those seeking a better life. This enduring legacy is embodied by the Statue of Liberty, our "Mother of Exiles," who stands as a beacon of hope for people escaping persecution and war.
World Refugee Day was first celebrated 25 years ago. This year’s theme, "solidarity with refugees," calls on us to recognize that true compassion does not end at the border. It means standing by refugees as they build their lives, acknowledging the full weight of our shared past, and ensuring that no one who seeks refuge from danger is ever forced back into harm’s way.
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Despite Court Protection Orders, Trump Admin Deports Refugees to War-Torn Central African Republic, Putting ‘Lives at Risk’
“It’s hard to fathom how deeply evil this is,” said Sen. Chris Murphy.
Jun 12, 2026
The US government advises Americans not to travel to the Central African Republic "for any reason." But it just deported nearly two dozen people to the war-torn country, including several refugees who fled persecution in other nations.
On Friday morning, Human Rights First's deportation flight tracker reported that a plane used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had landed in Accra, Ghana, after departing from Louisiana the previous day and was believed to be en route to the CAR's capital, Bangui.
Per The New York Times on Thursday, the administration was preparing to deport "at least two Iranian women who had sought refuge in the United States" as well as "migrants from Afghanistan and Syria."
According to their lawyers, several of the migrants had received court orders from judges prohibiting their deportation to their home countries, citing the risk of persecution there.
A lawyer for one of the Iranian women told the Times that neither of them has a criminal record and that they both have been granted court protection due to fear of threats to their freedom or lives if they returned to Iran. One is a Christian convert, and the other is a pro-democracy activist.
According to Reuters, just the activist ended up on the flight from Louisiana. But the Christian woman is still at risk, along with another Iranian national.
Human Rights First's @ICEFlightM is monitoring this egregious situation, and we urge our policy makers to decry this life-threatening flight and other deals that send people seeking safety back to the very harms from which they fled.
https://t.co/ABZZMTQNuS
— Human Rights First (@humanrights1st) June 11, 2026
The burden of proof to receive what is known as a “withholding of removal” status from an immigration judge is even higher than that needed for migrants to qualify for asylum.
Those seeking their deportations to be halted must demonstrate that it’s more likely than not that their life or freedom would be threatened if they returned to a specific country due to their race, religion, nationality, or political or social affiliation.
In order to get around orders protecting these migrants from deportation to their home countries, the administration is instead dumping them in what have been described as "third countries."
The flight departed on Thursday is the first US deportation flight to the CAR, which is one of the poorest countries in the world and is reeling from a civil war that's displaced more than a million people both inside and outside the country.
The country is under the State Department's highest travel advisory, warning US citizens not to go there "due to risk of unrest, crime, kidnapping, landmines, health, and terrorism."
This is the @StateDept travel advisory for the Central African Republic.
The United States—a self-proclaimed nation of refuge—is about to send refugees here. https://t.co/uxfexS5S73 pic.twitter.com/pvYyxIQHdN
— Sarah Pierce (@SarahPierceEsq) June 11, 2026
"People on this flight proved to a judge that they were likely to be persecuted in their home countries," said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. "This is profoundly unjust."
Human rights law experts Anjli Parrin and Savi Arvey wrote on Wednesday for Just Security that the administration was putting "lives at risk" by sending these migrants to a dangerous country where they know nobody and where basic healthcare infrastructure hardly exists.
They said the administration's deportation of these migrants "is the latest example of its dangerous and potentially life-threatening strategy: using secretive deals with countries to expel asylum seekers and migrants with no legal or personal connection to the places where they are being sent."
"Since early last year, the US government has signed a growing number of third-country forced transfer agreements with over 30 countries worldwide to expel and deport people to places where they have no legal or personal ties," they said.
"These deportations are often carried out in secrecy and without any semblance of due process," they added. "Individuals are often not given any advance warning or the opportunity to challenge their deportation to a third country—with many only discovering they are being sent to a country they may have never heard of while airborne."
Emily Trostle, a lawyer for the Iranian activist, told Reuters that the migrants facing deportation to the CAR "have absolutely no connection to this place."
“These individuals are being removed from the United States and abandoned in a country where they have no status, no connection, and no support network,” she said. “We fear they will ultimately be forced to return to the countries they originally fled.”
According to Human Rights First's Third Country Deportation Watch, governments around the world have been given $44 million from US taxpayers to receive these migrants. More than 19,000 people, it found, have been deported across 24 countries.
Most of them have been sent to Mexico, but the US has also shipped migrants to some of the poorest, most unstable nations in sub-Saharan Africa, including Eswatini, Equatorial Guinea, and Sierra Leone. Many have faced arbitrary detention and torture or been returned to the country where they fled persecution.
In order to avoid having to allow over 1,000 Afghans who fought alongside US soldiers to settle as refugees in the US as planned, the Trump administration is reportedly trying to ink a deal with the Democratic Republic of the Congo to take them instead, but the plan was stalled amid public backlash, and the administration is seeking other options.
It's hard to fathom how deeply evil this is, and that we have people running our country who get sick pleasure from sending women fleeing violence in Iran to an African country in the middle of a brutal civil war. https://t.co/JaN8z2LFI2
— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) June 11, 2026
The Iranian American Legal Defense Fund said on Thursday that the deportation of Iranian nationals was a “potentially fatal action,” as they could face danger in the CAR or be sent back to Iran.
Another person scheduled to be deported to the CAR was an elderly man from Syria, whose immigration attorney, Margaret Stock, told the Times that he had scars all over his body due to torture in his home country.
He is a Sufi Muslim and feared persecution if he returned there, and is in danger of lacking access to care for his diabetes if sent to the CAR. According to Stock, he received an emergency temporary order halting his deportation.
Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.), the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee in charge of funding for the Department of Homeland Security and its immigration agencies, responded to the Times report on the deportations with outrage.
"It's hard to fathom how deeply evil this is, and that we have people running our country who get sick pleasure from sending women fleeing violence in Iran to an African country in the middle of a brutal civil war," he said.
Reichlin-Melnick agreed: "Evil is the right word for... taking people who are safe in the United States, who have proven to a judge they would be persecuted in their home country, and dumping them in a random country in the middle of a civil war."
"No previous administration would have done this, despite it likely being legal," he added.
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‘Collective Failure of Humanity’: Nearly 118 Million Refugees Violently Displaced Worldwide
The number of people who were forcibly displaced at the end of last year dropped from 2024 levels, but that change was largely driven by people who were forced to return home, sometimes to precarious conditions.
Jun 11, 2026
The number of people forcibly displaced around the world fell last year for the first time in years, dropping by more than 5 million—but with that trend driven in part by countries that have forced refugees to return home, often to precarious or dangerous conditions, advocacy groups warned that the world's refugee and displacement crises are far from being solved.
At the end of last year, 117.8 million people were forcibly displaced around the world, according to data released Thursday by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). That number includes 41.6 million refugees, 9 million asylum-seekers, and 68.7 million internally displaced people.
While the number of displaced people fell from 123.2 million in 2024, the UNHCR emphasized that the change reflected "a sharp increase in the returns of refugees, mostly to Afghanistan, Syria, and Sudan."
"Many of the returns occurred under adverse circumstances and the reintegration conditions remain extremely challenging," said the agency.
Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), said that "in Afghanistan, millions were forcibly returned from neighboring Pakistan and Iran, and in [the Democratic Republic of] Congo some displacement camps were evacuated at gunpoint, sending thousands of families back to homes that no longer exist."
Of 2.9 million Afghans who were no longer considered forcibly displaced last year, most of their returns to their home country were "involuntary in nature due to changes in the policies of host countries."
In the US, the Trump administration last year terminated Temporary Protected Status for Afghan nationals, between 9,500 and 11,700 of whom were legally residing in the US. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans were deported from Iran, Pakistan, and Tajikistan last year.
"The first fall in global displacement in over a decade should be good news. Instead, it reflects misery on a historic scale," said David Milliband, president of the International Rescue Committee. "These numbers tell a story of both forced returns and forced displacement. People are returning to countries mired in crisis, most with no choice, with every route to safety collapsed around them."
The number of refugees who were successfully resettled dropped precipitously last year along with the number of people who were classified as displaced. Just 81,800 people found new homes through resettlement programs or sponsorship pathways, representing a year-on-year drop of more than half.
The top countries that continued to host refugees last year were Colombia, Turkey, and Germany, and more than 70% of refugees came from just six countries: Afghanistan, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, and Venezuela.
Egeland emphasized that while the number of forcibly displaced people fell last year, "the number of people who have fled their home because of violence and conflict has nearly tripled over the last 15 years."
"The 117.8 million people now violently displaced around the globe would constitute the world’s 13th-largest country by population. Larger than Egypt, Germany, or the UK. A human toll of vast proportions, and a collective failure of humanity," said Egeland.
The numbers released by UNHCR indicated that while millions "continued to be uprooted" last year, "many more endured protracted crises with no solution in sight. The world continues to fail civilians caught by conflict and violence."
UNHCR warned that among those who remain forcibly displaced, 7 in 10 refugees have been exiled from their homes for at least five years with little prospect of ever leaving refugee camps with precarious living conditions.
“For too many refugees, displacement starts as a lifeline but lasts a lifetime," said Barham Salih, the UN high commissioner for refugees. "Humanitarian aid saves lives, but it is not the end point and does not enable refugees to become active agents in control of their futures. We need a paradigm shift that creates a new sense of hope and opportunity for people fleeing war and persecution."
Salih called for a reduction by more than half, over the next decade, in the number of refugees who are reliant on humanitarian assistance and are living in temporary shelters.
"The initiative would expand opportunities for voluntary returns, humanitarian visas, and relocation, while transitioning refugees from aid dependency to self-reliance through access to education, healthcare, financial services, and labor markets," said the UNHCR.
The large numbers of people who have been forced from their homes—and in a rising number of cases, forced to return home under duress—"are almost impossible to comprehend," said Egeland. "And as an increasingly nationalistic world becomes increasingly desensitized to what it truly means to be forced to flee home, the gap between decision makers and donors and displaced people continues to widen. This cannot be accepted as the new normal."
“As humanitarians our work is to support displaced people in their hour of greatest need," he added. “But we cannot do this without a world that is willing to stand up for humanity... We must support diplomatic solutions to end crisis, and fund aid to relieve suffering. We must protect civilians and stand up for international humanitarian law. We must all remember our humanity.”
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When Refuge Is Rescinded: Hypocrisy and Our American Dream
The United States cutting off refugee resettlement domestically while waging a war that forces people to flee their homes abroad is a flagrant act of hypocrisy that is incompatible with the American Dream.
May 19, 2026
“Hip hip, hypocrisy! Hip hip, hypocrisy!” My teenage son pumped his fist in the air. I can’t remember the chain of conversation that ultimately produced this sardonic version of “hip hip, hooray!”, but the phrase has quickly become a way to get each other to smile or self-reflect, and it often leads to a bout of shared laughter. But recently, this chant has also allowed me to reflect on the fraught crossroads of my homeland and my emerging life’s work; specifically, the troubling hypocrisy of the United States’ recent actions on two interconnected global issues—forced migration and war.
I grew up in small-town Virginia, in a family that nurtured an honorable form of gratitude-based patriotism. As a doctoral student who studies refugee issues and forced migration, I have long been proud of the United States’ global leadership in refugee resettlement (while also believing that we should do more to support refugees). From the 1980s to early 2000s, the US routinelyresettled more refugees annually than all other nations combined. While this began to shift following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, there were only four years between 2002 and 2022 in which the US did not resettle the most refugees of any country in the world, coming in second to Canada in each of those four years. In 2023, our nation welcomed more than double the number of refugees resettled the previous year, and in 2024, we resettled over 100,000 refugees for the first time in 30 years. But unfortunately, US resettlement took an abrupt turn in 2025.
In an executive order issued on January 20th, 2025—the first day of President Donald Trump’s second term—the Trump presidency announced the suspension of the US refugee resettlement program. Another executive order followed on February 7, identifying South African Afrikaners as a group worthy of resettlement despite unverified claims of race-based persecution and misalignment with the globally recognized definition of refugeehood. Since October 2025, approximately 4,500 Afrikaners and three refugees from Afghanistan have been admitted under the US refugee resettlement program.
At the same time, our country’s leaders have waged war in the Middle East, creating “a new cycle of displacement” that continues to worsen. Whether or not you agree with the rationale behind this war, our country’s actions are increasing forced displacement on a global scale. Recent estimates project that this war has already forced up to 3.2 million Iranians and 1.3 million Lebanese citizens to flee their homes, and this number will almost certainly increase as the conflict continues. Furthermore, areas of the Middle East affected by the current war already host 24.3 million forcibly displaced people. As a scholar-in-training who cares deeply about both forced migrants and the United States, the hypocrisy of cutting off refugee resettlement domestically while acting in ways that force people to flee their homes abroad is excruciating.
The United States is simultaneously closing our doors to refugees and actively increasing the number of forcibly displaced people in the world.
But there’s also a double hypocrisy here, a vocal hypocrisy layered on top of this more tacit one. For years, President Trump has complained that other countries don’t pull their weight in NATO and the US shoulders an oversized portion of defense spending among the alliance. By the same logic, the US should pull our weight in supporting refugees, period—and especially when we are contributing to increases in global forced displacement. “Hip hip, hypocrisy.”
I hear you—don’t we have enough unmet needs among US citizens? Shouldn’t we fix everything in this country before we offer others permanent protection here? While there are many responses to these questions, for me the most compelling is summed up by Rabbi Sharon Braus, who maintains that “ultimately, the problem of the world is that we draw the circle of our family too small.”
The figures I’ve presented here are so much more than numbers—each one is a living, breathing person who has loved ones and a favorite color, and who also happens to have survived the harrowing experience of being forced to flee their home due to circumstances entirely outside of their control. Refugees are exceptionally resilient and resourceful people who contribute strength, wisdom, talent, tenacity, (and yes, taxes) to our society, helping us to address our collective needs together. Refugees are part of “we” and “our”—part of [the] “US.”
And yet, the United States is simultaneously closing our doors to refugees and actively increasing the number of forcibly displaced people in the world. The promise of America is not zero-sum—it is generative and generous and transformative. The American Dream I believe in includes not only those of us who were born in the US and have benefited from living here through no virtue of our own, but those who were born elsewhere and have been displaced from their home nations through no fault of their own.
As a future forced migration scholar, a deep longing for my homeland to treat refugees and other forced migrants with compassion, respect, and dignity has become a central feature of my own personal American Dream. Join me and make it an indispensable part of our collective American Dream!
Together, let’s not shy away from this needed and worthy work. Stand with me by imagining what it would be like to start over in a new place, talking about refugees and other migrants in humanizing ways, befriending a newcomer who might benefit from connection, or sharing this op-ed with a friend or loved one who might need to read it. The circle of our family grows as we expand it together, until the day we reach a full-throated “hip hip, hooray!”
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The Jingoist States of America: Our Cruel Mistreatment of Asylum Seekers
At such a moment in history, a movement that connects the dots between our many struggles is certainly the way forward. The plight of refugees—and how we treat them as a society—is a story that connects us all.
Apr 20, 2026
In late March, I sat in the gallery of the Supreme Court for the first time in my life. Throughout my 30 years of grassroots anti-poverty work, I’ve joined countless protests and vigils outside the Court. In 2018, I was even arrested and held in detention for praying on its palatial steps. Now, I was seated with a clear view of the nine justices of the nation’s highest court. I was there as a guest of immigrant rights lawyers, as their team made oral arguments in Noem v. Al Otro Lado, the most significant case on the right to asylum in decades.
In February, the Kairos Center (the organization I direct) authored an interfaith amicus brief on that very case, alongside 31 denominations and organizations representing faith traditions practiced by billions worldwide. Those groups, including the Alliance of Baptists, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Hindus for Human Rights, the Latino Christian National Network, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Reconstructing Judaism, the Union for Reform Judaism, the Unitarian Universalist Association, the General Synod of the United Church of Christ, and the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church, joined together to declare that our societal obligation to provide for persecuted outsiders is a universally shared moral principle.
Although the case has largely flown under the public radar, there is indeed a lot at stake. Filed on behalf of asylum seekers, Noem v. Al Otro Lado focuses on the legality of a 2018 Trump border policy blocking access to the U.S. asylum process for people arriving at the border with Mexico. Immigrant rights advocates argue that such a turnback policy, under which immigration officers physically stop people seeking safety at official border crossings from setting foot on U.S. soil, flouts decades of settled federal immigration law and our society’s most deeply held legal and moral values.
For more than a century, the government has been required to undertake a legal process of inspection when people seek asylum at official ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border (as they must inspect all noncitizens seeking admission to the United States). That requirement is supposed to ensure that this country doesn’t send vulnerable people back into danger without first allowing them to seek protection. A wide range of immigration lawyers and legal experts argue that the first Trump administration’s turnback policy, euphemistically called “metering,” directly undermined the government’s responsibility to process such asylum claims. As a result, vulnerable children, families, and adults were regularly forced to remain indefinitely stranded in perilous conditions in Mexico.
Although the turnback policy has not been in effect since 2021, when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declared it unlawful, the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to review the case. Should the government win (which is all too possible given the hyperpartisan nature of the current Court), the consequences are sure to be grave and far-reaching. The Department of Homeland Security would have the legal backing to turn away untold thousands of desperate people at the border, potentially clearing the way for even more expansive border closures, while further intensifying the jingoistic nationalism that defines the Trump administration. Alongside other landmark cases this term, like Trump v. Barboza, in which the government seeks to undo the constitutional right to birthright citizenship, the results of Noem v. Al Otro Lado are likely to reveal the lengths to which the Supreme Court is willing to backstop the president’s assault on democracy, including accelerated attacks on the rights of vulnerable populations.
The day I was there, the existential stakes of that case and the larger societal crisis in which it was unfolding did not seem to concern the court’s conservative justices. I had the words of George Washington (written in 1788 to the radical Dutch republican Francis Van der Kemp) in my mind as I sat in the gallery: “I had always hoped that this land might become a safe & agreeable asylum to the virtuous & persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong.”
Unfortunately, having heard the statements and reactions of some of the judges, I fear that the majority of the Supreme Court may no longer agree with that foundational vision for this country.
Courtroom Friezes and Draconian Law
The first thing that struck me on entering the Supreme Court gallery were the stone friezes on the walls of the room. Designed by Adolf Weinman more than a century ago, those large marble reliefs, featuring what he called the “great lawgivers of history,” tower over the space. Among them are prominent religious figures like Moses (holding a scroll of the Ten Commandments), King Solomon, Confucius, and a rendition of the Prophet Muhammad (that is entirely unrecognizable). The friezes also include Roman Emperor Octavian (otherwise known as Caesar Augustus, Jesus’s great nemesis), French King Louis IX (leader of the seventh and eighth crusades), and Draco (a Greek jurist whose legacy lurks in the word “draconian” because of the extreme measures he took to punish minor offenses).
As I stared at those figures, I reflected on the message they convey about the complex civilizational lineages from which the Supreme Court and our legal system derive their authority. In our amicus brief, we reflected on those varied lineages as they pertain to the right to seek asylum:
“Our asylum laws are the modern embodiment of a deeply rooted religious, cultural, and historical heritage that has consistently affirmed society’s obligation to provide refuge for those seeking safety. Asylum reaches back to some of the earliest moments of recorded human history. It was practiced throughout the ancient civilizations that forged the foundation of Western society. This tradition can also be found in the form of church sanctuary asylum, a mainstay of European culture for over a millennium.
“Our very nation began as a haven for persecuted political and religious minorities. This tradition is present throughout our history, from the practices of Native Americans to the Underground Railroad to modern times. Congress adopted our current asylum laws in significant part due to the efforts of faith-based groups seeking to uphold deeply held societal, moral, and cultural principles.”
Despite such deeply held and ancient principles, I couldn’t shake a sense of impending doom as I scanned the faces on the friezes and those of the justices. I thought of the awesome and awful power of Rome, depicted throughout the gallery, and its draconian reign of “peace” (or what Secretary of War Pete Hegseth recently termed “delivering peace through strength”). And I recalled the worsening anti-democratic and pro-oligarchic turn our own Supreme Court has taken in the Trump era.
Just consider the rulings from the past few years: the Court has essentially given immunity to the executive branch (although the Court is supposed to be a critical part of a federal system of checks and balances), criminalized homelessness (although the U.S. claims to be a nation of opportunity and prosperity for all), and degraded voting rights (cutting off the legs of our democracy).
Before oral arguments began in Noem v. Al Otro Lado, I was under no illusion that the Supreme Court delivers equality, freedom, and justice for all. And yet, on an issue as basic and legally sound as the right to seek asylum, I was still shocked by the flippancy of the court’s conservative judges. For hours, they rocked in their chairs, physically broadcasting their disinterest in the case. Rather than take seriously more than 100 years of legal precedent and hundreds more of long-established societal practice, they seemed to enjoy getting into hyper-specific and cherrypicked semantic and rhetorical arguments with Kelsi Brown Cochran, our lawyer.
In preparation for that day, I had brushed up on the history of U.S. asylum law. An important story in that history is the S.S. St. Louis, a ship that in 1939 was carrying 930 refugees from Hamburg, Germany, fleeing the Nazi regime, who were first denied entry to Cuba and then to the United States, only to be returned to Europe, where many of them were taken to the Nazi death camps.
Reflecting on that story at a pre-hearing press conference, Nicole Elizabeth Ramos, border rights project director at Al Otro Lado, a plaintiff in the case, offered this explanation:
“The right to seek asylum is not a policy preference or a loophole — it is a legal right and a moral commitment forged in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Seeking asylum is not like taking a number at a deli counter and waiting for your turn. You cannot ask someone fleeing rape, torture, or death threats to wait in danger indefinitely because a government has decided their lives are inconvenient. We filed this case because the United States has an obligation to follow its own laws — laws duly enacted by Congress. The question before the Court is whether those laws can be set aside by executive action, or whether they remain binding at the border, as written.”
In their apparent willingness to flout precedent and condemn modern-day asylees to harm or even death, the conservative justices unselfconsciously aligned themselves with American nativism and European fascism of the 1930s. If, in their final decision, they uphold Trump’s turnback policy, they will be affirming that, were the S.S. St Louis to sail again today, the ship would still be denied entry and its passengers asylum.
The Moral Crisis Is Not “Border Surges” But the Closing of the Border
The morning of those oral arguments, the Kairos Center and other faith organizations held an interfaith prayer vigil on the steps of the Supreme Court to call attention to the case. Reverend Michael Neuroth, director of the United Church of Christ’s Washington D.C. office, put the matter vividly: “Welcoming and protecting the stranger is not a minor tenet of our faith but is a foundational moral obligation in each of our traditions. Dismantling the right to asylum is morally wrong, strategically short-sighted, and increases insecurity here in our nation. We must be a nation of compassion, a place of refuge to those in need.”
The vigil was organized in the heart of the “holy season” amid Ramadan, Passover, and Easter. As billions of people globally engage in rituals of remembrance, repentance, deliverance, and liberation, our prayers and petitions focused not only on the legal precedent for the right to seek asylum, but on the moral imperative to do so. For Christians, protecting and welcoming the immigrant is one of Jesus’s first and most powerful teachings. It’s also among the highest moral commands of the Torah. As the prophet Jeremiah reminds us, “Do no wrong to the foreigner and do not shed innocent blood.” Asylum and societal hospitality are well-recognized rights within Islamic law and theology, a fundamental Hindu and Buddhist tenet, and part of Native American spiritual teachings.
In our interfaith amicus brief, we wrote: “As the many faiths practiced by this country’s citizens teach, a society that does not protect the least among us is a failed society.” As faith leaders, we had in mind not only the right to seek asylum, but the many ways the Trump administration has deepened and intensified a moral crisis at the heart of our society. We were thinking about the ongoing attacks on immigrant communities — from ICE-led campaigns of terror to family and child detention in places like Dilley, Texas. There was also the stripping of life-saving healthcare and food support from millions of Americans through cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP); the criminalization and forced deprivation of LGBTQ+ people; and the prosecution of anillegal war that threatens the lives of so many in Iran and the broader region, as well as the livelihoods of billions of us across this globe.
In Noem v. Al Otro Lado, the Trump administration is attempting to mask its cruelty and despotism through banal legal arguments. By focusing semantically on when protections start for asylum seekers and debating the meaning of the term “arrives in” (as in this country, of course), its lawyers were ignoring the illegality and immorality of border agents blocking asylum seekers from crossing the U.S.-Mexican border and the larger question of whether the United States can any longer be a place of safety and protection for all families “yearning to be free” of violence and persecution.
The government is, of course, hoping that we don’t make the connections between the stripping away of asylum rights, the larger issue of immigrant rights, and the many other ways that it’s targeting “the least among us.” That’s a mistake we can’t make and where the teachings of our many faith traditions have encouragement to offer. In Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and more, love, justice, and peace are not parceled out only for certain people in certain places. Across our religions, all life is sacred, full stop!
No Turning Back for Anyone
Intermixed with the important lawgivers of history in that marble frieze in the Supreme Court gallery are engraved winged personifications of “Peace,” “The Rights of Man,” “History,” “Authority,” “Fame,” and more. Those winged characters form what looked to me like a Greco-Roman “choir of angels,” proclaiming “law and order” at the expense of rights and dignity for us all.
Sitting there, I reflected on just who was not in that room listening to those arguments or forcing the Supreme Court justices to face the very lives impacted by their decision. I thought about all those who will never have access to that courtroom, or justice of any sort for that matter, the millions of people struggling to fight for their communities and a future where everybody is in and nobody is out.
Those people are — or at least should be — our hope. They are the true “choir of angels” who came out for the recent No Kings Day demonstrations and are standing up for the rights and dignity of communities all over the country. They are also the people who are increasingly giving Donald Trump historically low approval ratings. And here’s the truth of these times: this administration has nothing to offer everyday people, other than hardened borders and wars that nobody wants.
At such a moment in history, a movement that connects the dots between our many struggles is certainly the way forward. Therefore, it seems fitting that the coalition that came together to fight this case and protect the rights of asylum seekers calls itself “No Turning Back.” It reminds me of a song by Emma’s Revolution that I’ve sung many times at protests and gatherings. Its key lines are a reminder of what we all need to keep in mind in this deeply disturbing Trumpian moment of ours:
“Gonna keep on moving forward
Keep on moving forward
Keep on moving forward
Never turning back
Never turning back”
Because indeed, there can be no turning back for any of us. Either we get there together or we never get there at all.
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Human Rights Groups Denounce Trump Plans to Send Cubans Fleeing Impacts of Blockade to Guantánamo
“The continued use of Guantánamo Bay, which has an extensive history of abuse and torture, is horrific and unconscionable."
Apr 10, 2026
Dozens of human rights organizations sent a letter to Congress on Friday, decrying threats by US military officials to detain Cubans who flee to the US to escape President Donald Trump's crushing economic blockade at Guantánamo Bay.
The 86 groups, which include the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Center for Victims of Torture, the International Refugee Assistance Project, and Refugees International, zeroed in on remarks made by US Marine Corps Gen. Francis Donovan, the commander of the US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last month about how the military would respond to the mass influx of Cuban refugees to the United States.
The risks of a refugee exodus from Cuba were sparked in January after Trump tightened the already brutal regime of economic sanctions by threatening to slap harsh tariffs on any nation that provided oil to Cuba. The result has been a crippling fuel shortage that has caused routine blackouts and disrupted every facet of daily life, from hospital care to food cultivation.
Trump enacted the fuel blockade in what he has described as an effort to coerce the government to step down from power and make way for one more amenable to the interests of American companies. With Cuba in a weakened state, he has threatened to "take" the island outright using American military force.
The United Nations has warned that if the blockade is prolonged, it could bring about a total "humanitarian collapse.”
Asked by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) about what would be done if this caused a mass influx of Cuban refugees to the US, Donovan said they had an executive order that would involve coordinating with the Department of Homeland Security to handle a "mass migration event."
Donovan said it would include using the US military base at Guantánamo Bay, “where we would set up a camp to deal with those migrants or any overflow from any situation in Cuba itself.”
“Given the well-documented history of abusive and unlawful detention at Guantánamo, any proposal to use the base for additional detention is deeply troubling and unacceptable," the organizations wrote on Friday,
They note the prison’s history as a site used for extrajudicial torture during the global War on Terror and as a holding facility for other migrant groups, including Haitian refugees and asylum seekers who fled a military coup in the 1990s, many of whom were subjected to substandard living conditions.
"Time and again, we have seen the US government try to use Guantánamo as a legal black hole to mistreat migrants, subjecting them to inhumane conditions and interfering with both their right to seek protection in the United States and their right to counsel," said Pedro Sepulveda, a litigation fellow for the International Refugee Assistance Project.
Despite pledges from multiple presidents to close the camp for good, it remains open more than two decades after former President George W. Bush began using it to detain hundreds of terrorism suspects without trial.
Trump has expanded its use during his second term, using it to temporarily hold more than 700 migrants since February 2025—including dozens of Cubans rounded up by immigration agents.
Trump’s use of the camp marks the first time it has been used to hold people detained in the continental United States. A Washington Post investigation from February found that those in the facility were subject to weeks-long periods of isolation, invasive strip searches, and denied contact with lawyers.
The human rights groups called on Congress to block any funding that could be used to detain Cubans fleeing Trump's blockade and to shut down Guantánamo Bay for good.
"The president has held Guantánamo detention as a threat over the heads of migrants in the United States and now threatens the same over Cubans who may be forced to flee their homes as a result of his own actions," said Yumna Rizvi, a senior policy analyst for the Center for Victims of Torture.
Michael Galant, the senior research and outreach associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said, “If the Trump administration is worried about Cuban migration, the solution is simple: Stop intentionally impoverishing the Cuban people through an embargo and fuel blockade.”
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Listening to the People on the Other Side of US Bombs
As the US launches another illegal war in the Middle East, an author recalls what she learned from Iraqis who had lived through George W. Bush's invasion of their country.
Apr 01, 2026
I’m writing this piece well into President Donald Trump’s new war with Iran, which, with the help of Israel, has already killed more than 2,000 civilians, including 175 schoolgirls and staff; displaced some 3.2 million people; and is costing the American taxpayer at least $1 billion a day. All of which is tragically reminiscent of the last time a Republican president led the US into a war on a river of lies and greed. I’m thinking, of course, about George W. Bush and the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Weapons that don’t exist. Threats to this country that aren’t real. Liberation for a people that the US will never win over. Freedom for women about whom nobody in power cares a jot. A war that will bring total victory in only a few days or weeks. All this we heard in 2003, and all this we are hearing again now.
I spent many years writing about the Iraq War, even though it took me some time to figure out how to begin. I was sickened by the Muslim baiting that had been going on since the 2001 attacks on New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and disgusted with the Hollywood movies and legacy press articles glorifying our vengeful wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, while deifying our soldiers. I wanted to tell a different story. I just didn’t know how.
Then, in 2004, I came across the blog Baghdad Burning by a 24-year-old Iraqi woman who called herself Riverbend. She was the first Iraqi I had ever read on the war, and she taught me that those in an occupied country tell a very different story than do the occupiers.
The US might have toppled Saddam Hussein, but in the first five years of our war, we killed at least half as many Iraqis as he had in his 35 years of brutal dictatorship.
Back then, if Iraqi men showed up in American books, movies, or journalism at all, it was usually as an enemy or a clown. Meanwhile, Iraqi women were depicted as little more than incomprehensible black-clad figures hovering in the background or wailing over the dead. But Riverbend was none of those. She was a computer technician in a sophisticated city who sounded like an American college student. I was hooked.
Over the next few months, I read her blog religiously. Riverbend’s language and thoughts sounded no different than those of my own daughter, except that she was describing what it was like to live, hour by hour, through the overwhelming, heart-freezing violence of a US bombing campaign and the occupation of her country.
Today, we can get the same sense of immediacy by reading or listening to brave civilians and journalists in Gaza, but during our post-9/11 wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, hearing any voice from the “other side” was rare. So, Riverbend’s blog was not only eye-opening, but it made readers like me feel as though we were experiencing the war right beside her. She wove the mundane moments of her days—jokes, lighthearted observations, conversations with her family—in with her terror at the falling bombs and her feelings about the United States as she watched us tear apart her country. Her blog was eventually collected into a book and published by The Feminist Press in 2005.
Soon, I began reading other Iraqi blogs, too, along with every translation I could find of Iraqi poetry and fiction. I also followed videos by Iraqis that were appearing online, telling stories remarkably different from those I was hearing here in the United States. Some of those Iraqi civilians did indeed want democracy, although they didn’t believe it could be forced on anyone by a foreign power or bombs. Some had been satisfied living under Saddam Hussein’s autocratic rule. Many were too focused on their daily struggles to find food and avoid bombs to think about politics at all. But all of them, whatever their thoughts and opinions, were suffering horribly, not only from our bombs, but from wounds, illnesses, malnutrition, starvation, and threats of all kinds, as well as from bullying, kidnappings, rape, and murder at the hands of the gangs and militias our war had unleashed.
One of the most eye-opening of those Iraqi videos was made by an anonymous woman early in the war, who put on a burqa, hid her handheld camera under it, and drove around the countryside interviewing women about their struggles and poverty. As she explained, what she was doing was so dangerous that she had no doubt her video would only remain up on YouTube for a day or so. Sure enough, it quickly disappeared. I only hope that she didn’t disappear with it.
A Bloody Mess
President Bush’s war in Iraq quickly became a bloody mess. As I (and many others) documented, the US might have toppled Saddam Hussein, but in the first five years of our war, we killed at least half as many Iraqis as he had in his 35 years of brutal dictatorship. By 2011, our war had slaughtered some 1 million Iraqis, orphaned at least a million children, and displaced 4 million people within or outside Iraq, according to body counts by The Lancet medical journal, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and others. In short, 1 of every 5 Iraqis was forced from his or her home: a chilling foreshadowing of what we have since seen in Gaza, and that we are now beginning to see in Iran and Lebanon.
The US not only killed and displaced all those people; it bankrupted Iraq with sanctions, poisoned it with depleted uranium, destroyed its infrastructure and middle class, and dismantled its achievements. Before we invaded, Iraq had the best medical system in the Middle East, and women there had more rights than in any Muslim country other than Turkey, making up 50% of students and 40% of the workforce. By the time we left, all of that, including women’s rights, had been undone.
Today, women’s rights in Iraq have eroded even further and women are now relegated to second-class citizenship. Just this March 2, the most prominent women’s rights advocate in Iraq, Yanar Mohammed, was shot to death by men driving by on motorcycles. Nobody has claimed responsibility for her assassination, nor has anybody yet been arrested—and that was just one of many political assassinations there since our war.
While the US war machine was busy destroying Iraq and we were hearing all too little from Iraqis themselves, Americans at home were being bombarded with ever more movies (think Hurt Locker and American Sniper, for instance), books, TV series, and news stories about the heroism of US soldiers at war, as well as their traumas and struggles on returning home.
Harry Potter
Seeking relief from such a myopic view of war, I set out to meet Iraqis who had lived through the war themselves. I wanted to hear the other side, the side we were not telling. So, when I found out that several hundred Iraqis had been resettled in Albany, New York, on the special visas (called SIVs) reserved for those who had worked for two years or more as interpreters for the US military or government officials, I decided to seek them out. That is how I came to meet several women I will never forget, among them a young poet named Nour, and a mother of three named Hala. (I’m withholding their last names for their safety.)
Nour told me she had been imprisoned and tortured in the city of Abu Ghraib at the age of 16 for writing a poem that Saddam Hussein didn’t like. After her release, she taught herself English and later became a translator for a freelance American journalist. In 2005, she and the journalist were kidnapped in the city of Basra and shot. The journalist was killed, but thanks to several surgeries, Nour survived and came to the US with the help of his widow.
Nour and I met in New York City and had lunch a few times. Small and slight, with an angular face and haunted eyes, she was reserved and visibly fragile, but her bravery was unmistakable. She refused to be pitied and, in spite of all she had been through and the dangers she would face there, wanted more than anything in the world to go home.
Today, in Donald Trump’s America, neither Nour, Hala, nor any of the other Iraqi women and men I met would even be admitted to this country, no matter how much they sacrificed to help Americans and no matter how much they might be targeted at home for having done so.
Hala, the other unforgettable Iraqi woman I met, had fled Baghdad with her husband and children about a year before we met in 2010. The day I arrived at their apartment in a suburb of Albany, New York, he was at his job far away in New Jersey, work he had found only after 10 months of searching. But Hala, who was working as a substitute schoolteacher, was at home with her daughter, Hiba, who was 20, and her son, Mustafa, who had just turned 9. As I speak no Arabic, I was grateful that they were all fluent in English.
“Come in, come in,” Hala said when she opened the door, ushering me in with a smile and showing me to a chair in her immaculate, if somewhat bare, white living room. A round, energetic woman with a kind, if worn, face, she settled onto her sofa and sent her daughter to make the chai (tea). “Mustapha,” she said to her serious-eyed son, “this lady is a writer. She is from England.” (I am British and sound it, although I have lived in the US for many decades.)
His eyes grew big. “You wrote Harry Potter!” he declared. It was not a question. I tried to disabuse him of the idea but he refused to believe me. “I’m a writer, too,” he said. “Want to see?” He ran out to fetch his book—a sheaf of stapled papers he had made in school. “It’s about bad GIs and good GIs.” On each page, he had drawn soldiers and a sky raining with bombs.
After we had settled down comfortably with our tea, Hala told me that she and her husband had both been engineers, a highly respected profession in Iraq, and had hated Saddam Hussein, but had lived a pleasant enough life. Her daughter Hiba had been studying to be a dentist, and their two young sons were in school. “Baghdad was beautiful to us then,” Hala told me wistfully. “Looking back now, it was like that movie Avatar, that world of paradise before the invasion.”
But then the US did invade, their jobs disappeared, and money ran low, so her husband became an interpreter for US officials. Soon afterward, Hala’s brother was killed in retribution. Then, their middle child was kidnapped and murdered (by whom they never knew). He was only 15.
“Every day for a year, Hiba dreamed that she went home and found her brother there,” Hala told me quietly, while Hiba listened without saying a word. “She could not eat or get up or get dressed.” So, in the end, they fled to Jordan to escape the violence and find Hiba therapy, eventually obtaining a visa to the US, where Hala and her husband hoped their children would be able to forge better and safer futures.
“And how is that going?” I asked.
“I like school,” Mustafa told me with confidence. But Hiba said she was mostly ostracized by the other students at her Albany college. Feelings against Iraqis ran high in those days—against all Arabs, in fact—and she was spared little of it.
“Some of them don’t like me because they know I’m an Arab and Muslim, and some because they think I’m Hispanic,” she said, her pretty face rueful, and with a shrug, she pushed her long hair over her shoulder. Her only friend, she added, was a young woman who had moved here from India.
The Visas That Are No More
Today, in Donald Trump’s America, neither Nour, Hala, nor any of the other Iraqi women and men I met would even be admitted to this country, no matter how much they sacrificed to help Americans and no matter how much they might be targeted at home for having done so. Indeed, the chances of any refugee finding asylum in the US now are just about zero. The Trump administration has banned refugees, asylum-seekers, or any immigrants from 75 countries—including Iraq.
In light of this, I look back with nostalgia on the time I spent with Riverbend, Nour, and Hala, when Barack Obama was still president and Donald Trump had yet to loom all too large in our lives. And I can’t stop thinking about what Hala said when I apologized for what my country had done to hers.
She looked at me and nodded. “Mustafa, come sit on my lap.” She motioned to her son. “Listen to this lady, so you will know that not all Americans wanted that war.”
He nestled into her lap, his sister sat on another chair, and they all gazed at me, waiting.
Disconcerted by such an unexpected responsibility, I took refuge in addressing Mustafa. Looking into his little face, I attempted to apologize on behalf not only of the United States, but of England, too, for destroying his country and killing his brother. And then, like an idiot, I began to cry.
Hiba handed me a Kleenex, but neither she nor her mother and brother cried with me. I was mortified. What did I want from them, weeping like this? It wasn’t my son and brother who’d been killed. It wasn’t my life that had been torn away. It wasn’t my country that had been ruined.
Yet they continued to be kind. After I had recovered and we had spoken for a few hours, I asked Hala, “How can you stand living here with your former enemy? Aren’t you angry at us Americans?”
She shook her head. “No, no, my friend.” She smiled at me kindly. “We lived under Saddam. We understand that there are people. And there are leaders. And that the two are not the same.”
I wonder, as we rain bombs down on the people of Iran today, if they would be able to find it in themselves to be quite so forgiving.
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‘Beyond the Pale’: General Says US Military Will Create a ‘Camp’ at Gitmo to ‘Deal With’ Cubans Fleeing Trump Blockade
One foreign policy expert noted that fears of a "mass exodus" of refugees come "as the US starves Cuba of energy and food."
Mar 20, 2026
As the Trump administration sows chaos with a crushing fuel blockade of Cuba, a general told Congress that the military will "set up a camp" at Guantánamo Bay to detain those who try to flee the humanitarian crisis inflicted by the United States.
The phrase "humanitarian crisis" was used by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) to describe the situation in Cuba during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Thursday, as he questioned US Marine Corps Gen. Francis Donovan, the commander of the US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM).
Donovan, a 37-year Marine veteran, took command of SOUTHCOM in February after being tapped by President Donald Trump. His predecessor, Adm. Alvin Holsey, abruptly resigned in December reportedly after he'd raised concerns about the Trump administration's bombings of alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean, which have been widely described as illegal under international law.
On Thursday, Cotton asked Donovan, "Are we prepared for any kind of humanitarian crisis in Cuba—the possible flow of refugees, other civil disorder that may threaten our interests, especially if the decrepit, corrupt Castro regime finally falls or flees?"
"Senator, yes we are," Donovan responded. "SOUTHCOM... We have an [executive] order to be prepared to support [the Department of Homeland Security] (DHS) in a mass migration event. They would take the lead, we would follow."
Donovan said this would include using the US military base at Guantánamo Bay, "where we would set up a camp to deal with those migrants or any overflow from any situation in Cuba itself."
Trump signed an executive order during his first month in office last year directing DHS and the Pentagon to “expand the Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantánamo Bay to full capacity," which the administration said meant scaling the facility up to more than 30,000 beds.
The base, which houses a prison infamous for the extrajudicial torture of detainees during the global War on Terror, was designated under Trump's order to hold "high‑priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States.”
But Donovan suggested it may now be used to hold Cubans fleeing chaos and deprivation following Trump's own acts of economic warfare.
Cotton's question followed a warning that same day from Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis of a "possible mass exodus out of Cuba," which experienced an island-wide electricity blackout earlier this week following the Trump administration's blockade of fuel entering the island, which a group of UN rapporteurs said in January was “a serious violation of international law and a grave threat to a democratic and equitable international order.”
DeSantis, whose state is home to about 1.6 million Cuban-Americans, said, "[W]e don’t want to see a massive armada of people showing up on the shores of the Florida Keys."
He said he believed the Trump administration "would rather see people in Florida go help… hopefully get a new government going" in Cuba, possibly referring to the long-held hope of some right-wing Cuban exiles to take over the island.
Following more than 60 years of an embargo that has strangled Cuba's economic development, the Trump administration tightened the noose even more in January, signing an executive order that would slap harsh tariffs on any country that provides oil to Cuba.
As a result of the blockade, explained Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, "people don’t have reliable access to drinking water, hospitals can’t operate safely, basic goods are becoming increasingly difficult to obtain, and garbage is piling up in the streets.”
Trump first described his blockade as part of an effort to carry out regime change against Cuba's Communist Party leadership, but this week, he made the imperialist declaration that he may seek to outright "take" the island and that he could "do anything I want" with the "weakened nation."
Erik Sperling, the executive director of Just Foreign Policy, emphasized that the possible "mass migration event" described by Donovan was only coming "as the US starves Cuba of energy and food."
"Trump and [Secretary of State Marco] Rubio are to blame for any refugee crisis from Cuba, as the US intentionally harms civilians with an oil blockade," said Just Foreign Policy in a social media post responding to Republican warnings of Cuban mass migration. "US sanctions and meddling in Latin America have always been a leading cause of migrant flows."
Immigration journalist Arturo Dominguez explained that "What [Donovan] essentially said was, 'We're ready to accommodate the flow of refugees by putting them in camps.'" He added that "the way these military goons jump right in to 'accommodate' atrocity is beyond the pale."
Trump's blockade of Cuba is unpopular with the American public, according to a YouGov poll released earlier this week. Just 28% of adult US citizens said they approved of the US blocking oil shipments to the country, while 46% said they opposed it. The same survey found that just 13% want the US to use military force to attack Cuba, while 61% would oppose it.
Just Foreign Policy said, "The American people do not want their government to starve Cubans and cause a 'mass migration event.'"
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Fears of ‘Cataclysmic’ Refugee Crisis Grow as 3.2 Million Iranians Already Displaced by US-Israeli War
"If this evolves into a long-term war, and particularly if internal conflict emerges in Iran, the humanitarian consequences could worsen dramatically," said the president of Refugees International.
Mar 12, 2026
In less than two weeks, the US-Israeli war in Iran has caused a displacement crisis that Refugees International warns is "on course for cataclysmic civilian harm, displacement, and humanitarian need," amid repeated strikes on civilian sites and infrastructure.
As many as 3.2 million people are estimated to be temporarily displaced inside Iran, according to a report released Thursday by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Most of those who've been forced to flee their homes have been in Tehran and other urban centers, where US and Israeli airstrikes have been the heaviest, the report said.
Since the war was launched on February 28, Iranian authorities and humanitarian groups have reported widespread attacks on civilian areas and infrastructure by US and Israeli forces.
The Iranian Red Crescent Society reported on Wednesday that nearly 20,000 civilian buildings, including at least 16,000 residential units, have been affected by strikes, along with 77 healthcare facilities and 65 schools.
About 200 children in Iran are among approximately 1,300 killed and 9,000 injured in less than two weeks of war, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), which cited figures from national authorities.
"The war launched by the United States and Israel against Iran has been characterized by multiple strikes on civilian sites and infrastructure by all sides, often with flagrant disregard for civilian safety," said Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International, on Wednesday. "The United States/Israeli coalition has struck numerous civilian sites in Iran, and the Iranian military has struck multiple civilian sites in Israel and in multiple Gulf countries."
"These attacks on civilians have already caused hundreds of needless deaths and displaced hundreds of thousands of people," he added. "The humanitarian impact could expand exponentially if this develops into a prolonged war."
The deadliest single attack on civilians has been the bombing of the Minab elementary school in southern Iran on the first day of the war, where at least 175 people, mostly girls ages 7-12, were massacred. Preliminary findings of an investigation by the Pentagon reportedly indicate that the United States was responsible for the attack. Konyndyk said it was "likely the largest number of child casualties in a single US military attack since the My Lai massacre in Vietnam in 1968."
"But the Minab strike is far from the only strike on civilian sites. US and Israeli attacks have struck other schools, multiple medical facilities, numerous residential areas, and a water desalination plant. Iranian attacks have also struck civilian targets and infrastructure, including a desalination plant and urban residential areas," Kondynyk said. "All such sites are protected under international humanitarian law (IHL), raising the serious prospect that these strikes could constitute war crimes."
He added that "It is difficult to regard the pattern of US strikes on civilian sites as mere tragic accidents when the United States has systematically removed many of the safeguards that once helped prevent harm to civilians."
He condemned comments by US Secretary Pete Hegseth dismissing the "stupid rules of engagement" and his closure of a Pentagon office tasked with preventing civilian harm in order to maximize "lethality," according to a recent investigation by ProPublica.
Hegseth emphasized last week that the United States was not planning to take in a, "new wave of Middle Eastern refugees” that might be forced to flee the region by continued attacks on Iran and other countries.
The Trump administration has let in virtually zero refugees from anywhere in the world since October, with the exception of white South Africans.
There are already around 25 million people living in the Middle East who are considered refugees, internally displaced, or had recently been returned after being displaced.
The defense secretary has said countries in the region are "capable" of handling the new influx of potentially millions more displaced people, even as the US has drastically reduced funds for international organizations that administer humanitarian aid and refugee resettlement.
There are more than 1.65 million refugees living in Iran, around 750,000 of whom are from Afghanistan. Kondynyk noted that many of them already "have limited access to their rights or safe passage and already face rights violations and scapegoating by the Iranian state."
More than 800,000 people in Lebanon have been forced to flee their homes this month, according to Lebanese authorities, following Israeli orders clearing over 100 villages in the south and outside Beirut.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of Gaza's nearly 2 million people still remain displaced after more than two years of genocidal war waged by Israel, which destroyed most civilian infrastructure, according to the International Organization for Migration.
"If this evolves into a long-term war, and particularly if internal conflict emerges in Iran, the humanitarian consequences could worsen dramatically," Kondynyk said. "A prolonged conflict risks creating displacement and humanitarian crises on a massive scale, even as US cuts have kneecapped the global humanitarian system built to respond to such crises."
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