The federal government is drastically limiting the number of refugees entering the country, setting the lowest cap on asylum seekers ever. Ozarks at Large’s Daniel Caruth has more on what that means for local resettlement agencies.
For nearly 10 months, the flow of refugees into the United States has all but halted due to a presidential order that froze the nation’s resettlement program.
Last Thursday, though, a notice filed with the National Register stated the official annual cap for refugees in fiscal year 2026 would be 7,500 — the lowest level since the resettlement program began in 1980.
“This is deeply concerning for the entirety of the refugee resettlement infrastructure,” said Joanna Krause, executive director of Canopy Northwest Arkansas, the state’s leading resettlement agency based in Fayetteville.
She says the determination from the White House, while upsetting, was not surprising.
In 2020, the Trump administration capped the refugee number at 15,000, then the lowest in history.
“We saw under the first Trump administration, when refugee resettlement numbers declined over the four years dramatically, that local refugee resettlement nonprofits in communities across our country closed down.”
Krause says the freeze on refugees has already caused major shifts in the resettlement infrastructure, forcing many local agencies to close and cutting off services in many of those communities.
She says Canopy was estimated to welcome nearly 200 individuals this year, many of whom already have family living in the region.
“We had 68 people with their flights canceled in January after the Jan. 20 executive order indefinitely suspending the refugee resettlement program. And we have families coming into our office every single day, talking about the family members that they’re separated from — people who may be in refugee camps, who’ve gone through the United States refugee resettlement process and waited years and years.
“Resources are becoming more scarce because the United States government shut down so much of the USAID operations providing food for people in devastating circumstances. Hearing from local community members that their elderly parents or their child or their sister and her kids are in unlivable conditions is just devastating. It puts so much stress on our neighbors here.
“I’m not sure what to say other than to make a promise that I, and Canopy, and I know this local community will do everything that we possibly can to continue to keep our doors open. So as soon as there is the opportunity to welcome their family members, we will do so readily.”
This latest cap also includes priority given to white South Africans known as Afrikaners, as well as “other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination in their respective homelands,” according to the determination filed in the National Register last week.
Krause says Canopy has not been tapped to take any Afrikaners yet.
“I don’t know what the year ahead exactly will look like for Canopy. With only 7,500 people set to arrive, would any individuals come to Northwest Arkansas? Not necessarily. We know anytime there’s a new identified population, the priority areas are the communities that already have larger numbers of those populations because it helps people feel comfortable and get settled — shared culture, shared language. So Northwest Arkansas is not going to be one of those places.”
Since starting in 2016, Canopy NWA has welcomed nearly 1,000 people to the region. And while Krause says the future is uncertain, the work still continues.
“We have employers calling us regularly looking to fill a variety of different types of positions, from manufacturing to health care, to refer them strong, qualified workers.
“This year, we’ve also seen quite a few families who arrived in this country as refugees in other states move to Northwest Arkansas. And of course, we work with hundreds of volunteers every year who find a lot of value in being able to forge new relationships and get really connected and to get to meet people who they may not have otherwise had the chance to meet in their life and find tremendous value in that.
“So we want to continue to provide this service and value that we’ve seen so many people really resonate with.”
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