Category World News

Donald Trump has set the lowest refugee admission cap in the country’s history, limiting entry to just 7,500 for the fiscal year 2026.

The Trump administration stated in a presidential document from September 30 that the refugee system in the US would remain largely unaffected by the millions of refugees fleeing unsafe conditions.

Instead of white South Africans receiving the highest priority among the 7,500 slots available,

According to Executive Order 14204, “The admissions numbers shall primarily be distributed among Afrikaners from South Africa and other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination in their respective homelands,” the document stated.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that white South Africans are facing persecution there because of their Black status, a claim that the country’s top Afrikaner officials and the government have refuted.

The Trump administration’s decision to focus on the organizations that deal with refugee services went beyond Thursday’s filings.

Instead, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement will be rerouted to the current refugee resettlement grants and contracts, which are currently distributed to a number of public and private organizations.

A separate declaration stated that “the transfer ensures better alignment of resources, oversight, and accountability] of] resettlement activities that take place entirely within the United States.

Since the 1980 Refugee Act codified a formal procedure for admitting and relocating refugees to the US, Trump’s refugee cap is the lowest.

At least two million refugees have emigrated since then through the USRAP, or US Refugee Admissions Program. Immigrant rights organizations successfully challenged Trump’s plan to suspend the program when he took office.

The 7,500-person cap on Thursday represents only a small portion of the 125, 000 refugees who were permitted to enter under former president Joe Biden during his final year in office. The new, lower cap will run from October 2025 to September 2026.

There are currently 42.7 million refugees on the planet, according to the UNHCR.

There is no bottom cap, but presidents have the power to impose a cap on annual refugee admissions under the US Refugee Act. That has long raised the possibility that Trump, who cut admissions in his first term, could bring USRAP to a halt.

“Death for a crown jewel”

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, noted that Trump’s declaration appeared to change the definition of who is a refugee in a post on the social media platform X.

Trump’s new refugee determination, he wrote, “seems to call for the admission of refugees who wouldn’t fall under the definition of a refugee — someone who faces persecution (not ‘discrimination’) on the grounds of race, religion, nationality, affiliation with a particular social group, or political opinion.”

He added that “people fleeing ethnic cleansing and other horrors” have been acknowledged by the US refugee program for decades.

He said, “Now it will be used as a pathway for White immigration.” What a failure for America’s most renowned international humanitarian initiatives.

Trump did not appear to have adhered to the necessary congressional consultation process before announcing the cap, according to the International Refugee Assistance Project. The group criticized the action as being overtly political.

The organization’s president, Sharif Aly, said in a statement that “Today’s announcement highlights how far this administration has gone in terms of reneging on its obligations to displaced people around the world.

The statement read, “America’s refugee program was created to reflect our values, and the thousands of people we’ve closed our doors to represent the thousands of missed opportunities of people who could have strengthened a local community or economy,” according to the statement.

Trump’s declaration did not provide a justification for the dramatic drop in refugee admissions, stating only that it was “justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest.”

Some advocates had hoped that the refugee program, which historically had broad bipartisan support, might be spared, but the US president has led a massive crackdown on all forms of immigration since taking office.

The US withdrawal from Afghanistan has increased the cross-aisle support in recent years, with many politicians supporting Afghans who worked for or with allies or their allies as aides to immigration.

While other specialized immigration programs are still obstructed or behind schedule, many Afghans have relied on the refugee program.

Trump has focused primarily on white Afrikaners since taking office for a second term. For instance, Trump cut aid to South Africa in Executive Order 14204, which was issued in February, on the grounds that it showed “shocking disregard” for Afrikaners.

White South Africans were “victims of unjust racial discrimination,” according to the order’s recommendation that they should receive humanitarian assistance, including refugee admissions.

A day after a string of deadly Israeli strikes across the besieged enclave destroyed the fragile Gaza ceasefire, Hamas claims that Hamas has handed over two bodies that it claims were of deceased Israeli prisoners.

The two bodies had been received by Israeli forces via the Red Cross in Gaza, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office on Thursday, according to a statement released by the organization. They would then be transported into Israel for identification.

In exchange for Israel releasing nearly 2, 000 Palestinian political prisoners, Hamas released 20 living prisoners under the US-brokered agreement to end Israel’s two-year occupation of Gaza. Additionally, Israeli forces have partially withdrawn from Gaza’s urban centers.

However, dozens of Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks in the area since the ceasefire started on October 10. 104 people were killed in Israeli attacks, including 20 women and 46 children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry from Tuesday through Wednesday.

In exchange for the bodies of Palestinians killed in the war, Hamas agreed to release the remains of all 28 captives. It claimed on Thursday that it had collected 15 sets of remains and that it is still pressing for proper equipment and support to comb through the dense rubble and debris where thousands of Palestinians who were killed in Israeli airstrikes are still buried.

Israel contends that Hamas has returned the bodies of Israeli prisoners who are still being held in Gaza too slowly.

According to Tareq Abu Azzoum, a reporter for Al Jazeera from az-Zuwayda in central Gaza, Hamas is still dealing with “logistical and operational difficulties regarding the retrieval of the bodies, particularly in areas that have been impacted by the Israeli bombardment.”

“Hamas has been calling for the use of heavy bulldozers and machines to speed up the recovery of bodies. However, Israel is still accusing Hamas of purposefully putting off the bodies’ release, according to Abu Azzoum.

One of the issues preventing US President Donald Trump from ending the war for good has been the recovery and handover of bodies.

The future administration of Gaza and Hamas’ need to disarm are two major challenges that remain.

“Essential role of NGOs”

Before dawn, witnesses claimed tanks shelled areas east of Gaza City in the north and Israeli planes carried out 10 air strikes in areas east of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.

In the areas of Gaza where its forces are still present, the Israeli military claimed to have carried out “precise” strikes against “terrorist infrastructure that posed a threat to the troops.”

A UN official called for the aid’s distribution to be made available to NGOs in the meantime, noting that more than 24 000 tonnes of UN aid have already arrived in Gaza since the ceasefire’s start.

Humanitarians continue to face funding shortfalls as well as coordination issues with Israeli authorities, which are still securing crucial border crossings, according to the UN. Aid volumes have increased significantly since the ceasefire.

In the 20 days following the ceasefire, the Middle East Regional Director of the World Food Programme, Samer Abdel Jaber, reported that they had “collected about 20 000 metric tons of food inside Gaza.”

The main focus and prerequisite for us to be able to provide humanitarian assistance in a holistic manner is still the implementation of the 20-point [ceasefire] plan, according to Alakbarov.

He demanded that Israel grant permission for more NGOs to distribute aid to Gaza, which Israel has prohibited.

“The persistent issue with NGOs’ registration continues to be a bottleneck.” We have raised the priority of national NGOs’ involvement in humanitarian operations in Gaza, and we continue to emphasize this,” he said.

The majority of Gaza’s more than two million people have been displaced by Israel’s assault several times. The majority of residents of their devastated neighborhoods have not yet returned, fearing that Israeli forces may soon retake control of their neighborhoods.

On Thursday, the Israeli army demolished homes east of the Tuffah and Shujayea neighborhoods in eastern Gaza City, according to sources.

As part of what residents describe as a coordinated campaign to clear large swaths of residential blocks, Israel has been demolishing homes since the beginning of its renewed ground incursion in the area earlier this month.

According to filings under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), Israel has contracted at least three public relations firms to improve its reputation online and among the country’s Christian right.

Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in accordance with US Department of Justice records, worked with European Havas Media Group to create the newly established Bridges Partners, Christian PR firm Show Faith by Works, and online consulting Clock Tower X.

All of the companies that were contracted made the promise to improve the nation’s online reputation and win back the support of young right-wing and evangelical US voters, which polls indicate is causing haemorrhaging as a result of Israel’s occupation of Gaza.

Israel’s allies and supporters in the US are acutely aware of the need to control how their war, which has resulted in the deaths of more than 68, 000 Palestinians, perceive it.

A coordinated social media campaign, which started in October 2023, was revealed in a study of Israel’s online activity that was published by the Al Jazeera Centre for Studies in May.

In the first few months of the war, Israel was able to gain favorable coverage from the traditional US media, but it was losing the battle on social media, where videos showing the massacre and destruction of Gaza were popular and gaining Palestinian support.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged this, referring to social media as a “weapon” in Israel’s effort to win US support, and citing TikTok’s purchase by a consortium led by pro-Israel billionaires as “the most important purchase.”

I had the honor of posing a query to Bibi Netanyahu about the possible loss of evangelical support for the state of Israel following Charlie Kirk’s murder. pic. https://twitter.com/XP2faZQa0N

Each of the PR firms hired by Havas promises to take a different approach to the campaign, including including how war is discussed online, as well as religious groups.

preserving one’s faith

In order to promote “positive associations with the Nation of Israel” in American churches and portray “the Palestinian population” as “extremist,” Israel has hired Show Faith by Works to run a $3.2 million outreach and digital targeting campaign, according to its FARA filing.

Show Faith by Works also promises Israel that it will carry out “the largest geofencing and Christian targeting campaign in US history,” according to documents included in the FARA filing.

When users are in close proximity to a specific location or area, such as Christian universities or churches, geofencing targets and tracks their communication devices.

The company also has plans for a mobile “10/7 Experience,” which could include events, conferences, and events involving Christian colleges and churches in response to the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

The experience would include a “VR headset, set pieces, full-length TVs for interactive experience” of the attack, which saw 1, 139 people killed and about 250 taken captive, according to the filings.

The company claims to be able to offer the participation of “Christian Celebrity Spokespeople” like actors Chris Pratt and Jon Voight, both of whom have publicly supported US President Donald Trump.

Rewriting the present

Clock Tower claims in its FARA filing that it has been engaged to connect with the Gen Z age demographic through social media platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Instagram and to engage with artificial intelligence (AI) platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok. The activities officially aim to “combat anti-Semitism” – a term often deployed by the Israeli government to counter criticism of its genocidal war on Gaza.

In its filing, Clock Tower promises to use AI modelling to ensure that the Israeli-supervised campaign – and by extension narratives – are prominent online during the course of its war on Gaza.

“If you can create enough online noise, through either social media or highly ranked websites, you’re able to influence AI’s large language models]like ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok]”, said Marc Owen Jones, an associate professor of media analytics and an expert in disinformation at Northwestern University Qatar.

“LLMs]large language models] are trained on a set amount of data, where they scrape large amounts of]historical] information. However, many models such as Grok, ChatGPT or Gemini use what they call retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), where they also pull contemporary data from websites and social media”, Jones said.

“What companies like Clock Tower X are promising is that, if they can flood the information space with sites and content sympathetic to Israel – what’s called RAG poisoning –&nbsp, there’ll be enough there to at least muddy the waters around what others see as a clear-cut genocide”.

Clock Tower, headed by former Donald Trump aide Brad Parscale, also says that much of this content will be integrated with that of right-wing Christian network Salem Media, which in April announced a strategic partnership with Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr, and his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump.

Anonymous influencing

The campaign promised by Bridges Partners has already become the source of an online meme – but not in the way the company or Israel would have been hoping.

Bridges Partners ‘ campaign involves an unnamed cohort of between 14 and 18 influencers who would be paid to post in support of Israel. After breaking down the figures included by Bridges Partners in their invoices to Havas, Responsible Statecraft – the Quincy Institute’s online magazine – found that the influencers were likely being paid around $7, 000 per post.

The number has been quickly seized upon by detractors of Israel, who regularly post the amount underneath posts they suspect of being part of the pro-Israel campaign, indicating that they believe the poster has been “bought” by Israel.

Responsible Statecraft reported earlier this month that the anonymity of the US influencers, who under the terms of their agreements would post paid pro-Israel content since July, could potentially be illegal if their identities remain undisclosed.

At present, the Bridges Partners filing names only one registered foreign agent: consultant Uri Steinberg, who holds a 50 percent stake in the company.

It is too early to say whether the campaign will ultimately be successful. But the backlash towards the arrangement once it became public illustrates just how difficult the task will be for Israel to change perceptions that have now become deeply ingrained, particularly among younger people.

“No matter what artificial data is produced, it still won’t be enough to counter the volume of factual reporting of the war on Gaza”, Jones said.

There might be enough to arouse a sense of uncertainty, make both sides more equal in the conflict, or make Israel’s response to the October 7 attack more reasonable than some people currently believe it to be.

Al Jazeera is unable to contact Bridges Partners, Clock Tower X, or Show Faith by Works for comment.

Eran Shayovich, the head of the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs, and Havas Media Group have also received inquiries that have not been resolved.