Insights and Analyses

• In 2023 and 2024, refugee resettlement numbers began to increase after the U.S. saw historic lows between 2018 and 2022. In fiscal year (FY) 2025, the annual refugee resettlement ceiling remains at 125,000, where it has been for the last three years. The number of refugee admissions, however, remains significantly lower than the ceiling—with about 60,000 admitted in FY 2023 and 100,000 in FY 2024.

• California remains one of the top states for refugee arrivals in the U.S. During fiscal years 2012-2022, about 9% of refugee arrivals initially resettled in California. More recent data analyzed by the American Immigration Council revealed that between FY 2018 and FY 2024, California saw over 21,000 refugees resettle within the state, which is second only to Texas.

• In recent years (2017-2022) Sacramento, San Diego, and Los Angeles counties were the top destinations for refugees in California.

• Between 2002 and 2022, a large number of refugees have arrived in California from countries like Iran, Iraq, Ukraine, and Laos.

• According to the Office of Refugee Resettlement in an August 2025 release, about 82,000 unaccompanied minors have been released to sponsors in California between 2015 and 2025. As of October 2024, the American Bar Association reported just over 6,000 children were in ORR care at the 171 facilities and programs funded by the Office of Refugee Resettlement that exist in 24 states, though these numbers fluctuate throughout the year.

• The federal government has continued to restrict the ability to seek asylum—a human right under U.S. law—at the southern border. Given that those who are granted asylum are then designated with refugee status, changes to asylum processes limit the number of people who can eventually be considered refugees. In the past, those seeking asylum were able to arrive at the border and begin the process of seeking asylum. However, in recent years policy changes have severely restricted eligibility for those at the border. For more on current asylum processes, see the 2025 fact sheet by American Immigration Council.

• According to the Migration Policy Institute, only 36 Palestinian refugees were admitted into the U.S. in 2023. As of the end of 2024, however, it is estimated that nearly 5.9 million Palestinian refugees have been displaced from their homeland and live throughout the Middle East. While the mass displacement of Palestinians is rooted in the ongoing violence and occupation by Israel, other factors like the difficulty in obtaining citizenship in other host countries and lack of funding by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) contribute to this displacement crisis. In February 2024, As a result of pressure from Democratic leaders and advocates, the Biden Administration announced the Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) designation for certain Palestinians, deferring their deportation and granting employment authorization for 18 months due to the ongoing conflict. This designation period ended on August 13, 2025.

• In April 2022, President Biden announced the creation of the “Uniting for Ukraine” program which would allow 100,000 Ukrainian immigrants to come into the U.S. as refugees. While the program has paused as of July 2025 under the Trump administration, Ukraine is still a designated county under Temporary Protected Status (TPS) through October 2026. There was significant outcry over the preferential treatment that Ukrainian refugees receive in the U.S. compared to non-white migrants fleeing violence or persecution in African, Caribbean, and Middle Eastern countries. In a statement, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees urged that the solidarity efforts of the U.S. and other countries demonstrated to refugees fleeing Ukraine should “set the example for all refugee crises.”

• The number of Afghan immigrants has grown in the U.S. In 2010, the Afghan immigrant population stood at 54,000 and by 2022 that number was 195,000. In 2022, the U.S. withdrew from the region and many Afghan nationals evacuated to the U.S., primarily through humanitarian parole—a process that grants immigrants temporary status without a pathway to lawful permanent residency. Between 2019 and 2023, California was home to nearly 38% of Afghan immigrants. Despite California’s long-standing commitment to refugees, it is becoming increasingly difficult for Afghan refugees to remain in the state amidst the affordable housing shortage and the state’s cost of living.

• California is also home to a long-settled Southeast Asian refugee community. A 2020 report from the Southeast Asia Resource Center and Advancing Justice – Los Angeles highlighted that in 2010, about 36% of all Southeast Asian Americans in the U.S. lived in the state.

Although seeking asylum is a human right, in the past few years, U.S. policy changes continue to restrict this right at the southern border, affecting many immigrants, in particular, Black immigrants, continuing the history of racism and exclusion inherent in immigration policy.

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, between 2020 and 2022, the federal government used a little-known section of U.S. health law called “Title 42” to deny refugees and asylum seekers entry to the U.S. under the pretense of public health concerns. Although public health experts insisted that public health protocols could be enacted to safely process the entry of refugees and asylum seekers, Title 42 continued to be enforced under the Biden administration with some modifications. This contributed to the deportations of hundreds of thousands of Central American, Haitian, and Mexican immigrants who are denied the right to apply for asylum. Indeed, in 2021, the Haitian Bridge Alliance, The Quixote Center, and The UndocuBlack Network published, The Invisible Wall, a report detailing the history of Title 42 and the life-threatening impacts on Haitian immigrants. However, this is not the first time that Black migrants have been systematically excluded from pathways to immigration—an article by The Washington Post details this long history of exclusion.

In 2023, the Biden administration announced a new method of entry into the U.S. for asylum seekers through the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) App, requiring certain immigrants to submit their information and schedule appointments at ports of entry. Yet, the app has been plagued by issues including: disproportionate rejections of photos of migrants with darker skin tones; lack of access to the technology and connectivity required to download the app; and system errors that prevent users from submitting their information. Further, when the Title 42 order ended in May 2023, the Biden Administration established the “Circumvention of Lawful Pathways Rule” or the asylum transit ban, a new process at the border to manage immigration that advocates have criticized as dangerous and harmful. Legal advocates sued to stop implementation of the regulation that blatantly bans most asylum seekers from entry. However, the regulation remains in place while the case works its way through the courts.

Additionally, in early 2024, the U.S. senate attempted–and failed–to pass a “bipartisan” border bill that would overhaul the asylum system and according to advocates and organizers, “disproportionately impact Black migrants.” In early 2024, advocates and service providers continued to call on the current administration not to restrict asylum as his predecessor did, but instead establish a more humane and effective system that does not jeopardize migrants’ safety. To learn more about the recent asylum policy changes under Biden, read a New York Times article here. To read more about the impact of asylum transit ban on youth, see Immigrant Legal Resource Center’s fact sheet here.

Photo credit: Haitian Bridge Alliance

San Diego’s Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans (PANA) advances full economic, social, and civic inclusion of refugees and displaced populations.

The Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans (PANA), based in San Diego, continues to uplift the voices of African, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian refugee and displaced communities in California and around the nation. PANA’s strategies include organizing and leadership development for refugee community members, building electoral power, providing legal resources, and implementing policy victories for the refugee community. Founded, led, and staffed by refugees, PANA uses relational organizing to bring community onto a pathway of ongoing engagement and leadership development to build community power in the fight for social change. Refugee communities have been impacted in recent decades by racial and ethnic profiling, religious discrimination and Islamophobia, increased government surveillance and law enforcement harassment, and less access to equitable housing and job opportunities. A 2023 survey conducted by PANA found that these barriers to belonging still very much exist in San Diego – refugee youth are most vulnerable to discrimination and violence, the majority of participants are currently making less than San Diego County’s living wage, and overwhelming numbers of refugee families are living in extremely crowded conditions and experiencing rent burden.

PANA’s work expanded to include Afghan refugee resettlement and advocacy for pathways to permanent legal residency after the U.S. withdrawal of troops in Afghanistan in 2021. Most recently, PANA added a dedicated immigration legal defense team to support recently displaced individuals in need of adjustments to their status and other legal aid, including asylum cases. In recent years, applications for asylum increased; however, the U.S. had been slow to process asylum cases for Afghans, and with the July 2025 expiration of Afghanistan as a TPS-designated country, many are now left in a state of limbo since neither parole nor TPS offers direct paths to permanent residency.

This past year, PANA announced its efforts to establish a Refugee & Immigrant Cultural Hub, which, once developed, will be an innovative community campus with affordable housing, transitional housing, nonprofit services, a global market, and more. The RICH hub, inspired by community visioning, will be bringing community-led solutions to the forefront to create a place where all refugees and immigrants can thrive.  

To learn more about PANA and their other work including advocating for a citywide tenant protection ordinance, coalitional work to reduce surveillance on local communities, and ongoing campaigns, click here.

Photo credit: Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans

Resources

• Organizations: 

  • Al Otro Lado

  • Haitian Bridge Alliance

  • UndocuBlack Network

• Reports:

  • Beyond A Border Solution: How to Build a Humanitarian Protection System That Won’t Break

  • LIVES AT RISK: Barriers and Harms As Biden Asylum Ban Takes Effect

  • Ukrainians at the U.S.-Mexico Border: Seeking Admission at U.S. Ports of Entry by Nationality

  • Failure to Protect: Biden Administration Continues Illegal Trump Policy to Block and Expel Asylum Seekers to Danger

  • Humanitarian Disgrace: U.S. Continues to Illegally Block, Expel Refugees to Danger

  • MPP Transfers Into United States Slow and Nationality Inequities Emerge

  • The Invisible Wall: Title 42 and its Impact on Haitian Migrants

  • Unrepresented Families Seeking Asylum on “Dedicated Docket” Ordered Deported by Immigration Courts

• Articles: 

  • How does the U.S. refugee system work?

  • Border Patrol releases hundreds of migrants at a bus stop after San Diego runs out of aid money

  • To Resolve the Humanitarian and Administrative Border Crisis, the U.S. Must Fix the Broken Asylum System, Help Stabilize the Western Hemisphere, and Provide Robust, Orderly Migration Pathways

  • CIPC: Senate Immigration Bill Brings Back Failed and Harmful Trump-Era Policies: Congress Should Reject This Anti-Immigrant Proposal and Support Humane Immigration Policies

  • An Analysis of the Senate Border Bill: The Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Acts (H.R. 815)

  • ICE Out of CA Zine: Bringing Our Vision of Safe Communities HOME

  • Unsettled: The Afghan Refugee Crisis Collides with the American Housing Disaster

  • Eat well and do good: MAKE Projects, a California non-profit, helps refugees thrive in San Diego

  • Afghan Immigrants in the United States

  • Court-Ordered Relaunch of Remain in Mexico Policy Tweaks Predecessor Program, but Faces Similar Challenges

  • The unprecedented situation at the US-Mexico border – visualized