Executive Summary 1 This article introduces a special edition of the Journal on Migration and Human Security on the causes, effects, and future of the second Trump administration’s “migration-related” policies, a term meant to encompass U.S. legal immigration, enforcement, refugee, asylum, development, and humanitarian assistance programs. In outlining the 11 studies comprising the collection, this article examines: The myriad effects of the administration’s policies on individuals, communities, and institutions, as revealed by original research, legal analysis, and reporting. Their reception in U.S. courts, Congress, and public opinion, which may serve as a bellwether to their direction and future. The rationale offered for these policies and the rhetoric deployed in support of them. The collection emerged as the Trump administration: Slashed U.S. foreign aid, including development and humanitarian assistance programs. Pursued a mass deportation and detention program of unprecedented scope, ambition, and cost. Sought to make conditions so harsh, coercive, and unsettled that U.S. undocumented residents and other targeted non-citizens would “self-deport.” Instituted largely unprecedented bans and barriers to legal immigration. Eviscerated the nation’s refugee resettlement program. Eliminated the one mechanism for asylum-seekers at the border to access the U.S. asylum system, removed asylum seekers without a hearing, placed them in expedited removal, and adopted exclusionary legal processes and requirements. Depopulated U.S. temporary protection and humanitarian programs, exposing more than five million formerly “legal” residents to possible removal. Transformed the immigration courts into an immigration enforcement tool. Exhibited disdain for the rule of law, U.S communities that oppose its mass deportation policies, and the contributions of refugees and immigrants to the nation’s life. Eviscerated watchdog and investigative institutions and units, which are charged with upholding standards and with documenting, investigating, and offering a check on abuses against immigrants. The special edition draws from diverse disciplines and fields, and covers a range of issues—border control, migration deterrence, overseas development, humanitarian assistance, mass deportation, detention, refugee protection, asylum, statelessness, and the treatment of unaccompanied minors. It explores the response of targeted communities to the administration’s policies and the effect of these policies on institutions, partnerships, and systems built over decades. Finally, it offers original research and evidence-based policy proposals to guide future administrations, Congress, states and localities, civil society institutions, and the public.
Executive Summary In times of crisis, local governments transform from service providers into emergency responders. When hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers arrived in New York City from 2022 to 2024, New York City government was compelled to help them integrate into communities. To do this, New York City designed, opened, and operated the largest asylum application help clinic in the country. The New York City Asylum Application Help Center (the Center) was the first in the nation to combine government, private sector, nonprofit, and university support to provide pro se application support at scale. The Center did not provide legal representation. Submitting more than 111,000 immigration applications over its 24-month life, from June 2023 through June 2025, the Center helped a sizable portion of new arrivals apply for immigration relief (City of New York, Office of the Mayor 2023a, 2025). As a result of its scale, the Center helped tens of thousands of asylum seekers move closer to work authorization while seeking some type of immigration benefit. It also gave New York City the operational credibility to advocate for improvements to federal immigration procedures. This paper examines the creation and impact of the Center and makes four recommendations: Advocacy should start with good operations. The Center was able to achieve positive changes to procedural hurdles in the federal immigration system because of its scale and the quality of its applications. High-quality operations at scale cannot only have a large impact but also create leverage to advocate for change. Municipal governments should operationalize best practices learned during emergencies. Short-term emergencies often result in some of the most effective government responses. Successful innovations should be incorporated into local governments’ social service systems once the emergency ceases to exist. Public and private actors can, and should, collaborate in response to major challenges facing cities. The success of the Center was due in large part to collaboration among public and private actors. It represents the work of a city that found ways to leverage the highest and best use of each collaborator to rise together and meet a challenge. Government systems should simplify processes and focus on substance. The US immigration system is fractured. Reform is needed to ensure that immigration benefit applications are adjudicated on their merits, rather than on the ability of the applicant to access and navigate complex federal processes. The section “The challenge facing New York City” of this paper provides context, explaining the challenge facing New York City as hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers arrived. The section “The Asylum Application Help Center and Its Impact” describes how New York City ran the Center and its impact. The final section, “Policy Recommendations”. expands upon the recommendations noted above. More broadly, the Center illustrates how municipal governments can use operational innovation (separate from policy advocacy) to influence implementation of federal immigration law.
Executive Summary In recent years, federal and state immigration policy shifts have extended surveillance, detention, and deportability into workplaces, schools, healthcare institutions, and local communities. This article examines how these enforcement-first conditions shape Florida immigrants’ resettlement experiences, sense of belonging, and conceptions of home. Drawing on 53 interviews with immigrants with varying legal statuses, and employing the right to remain conceptual framework adapted to the resettlement context, we argue that immigrants’ resettlement intentions are best captured through the concept of resettlement ambivalence —a persistent tension between immigrants’ understanding of their right to stay and the fear and uncertainty produced by an enforcement environment that makes staying feel increasingly precarious. We show how enforcement can destabilize long-term resettlement, although most immigrants assert a moral and practical right to stay in the US.Key Findings: Enforcement restructured daily life around risk, limiting mobility and long-term planning, and eroded belonging across all legal statuses, producing resettlement ambivalence. The familiarity of relational ties and security of home complicated resettlement ambivalence. Most participants asserted their understandings of their and their families’ right to stay, rooted in years of residence, family ties, and community contributions. Policy recommendations: Implement pathways to permanent legal status for those with liminal or precarious statuses. Restore sensitive locations protections. Eradicate participation in local 287 (g) agreements. Increase funding for mental health and social services tailored to immigrant communities.
Executive Summary Contemporary humanitarian responses increasingly depend upon refugee leaders and refugee-led organisations to mobilise communities, facilitate implementation, and sustain everyday governance within displacement settings. Yet comparatively little is known about how authority is organised around these intermediary roles or how refugee leaders navigate the institutional arrangements within which they operate. This study examines how refugee leadership operates within Nakivale Refugee Settlement, Uganda, drawing on qualitative data from forty-one participants, including representatives of refugee-led organisations, Refugee Welfare Council leaders, and officials from the Office of the Prime Minister. The findings highlight the centrality of refugee leaders as intermediary actors within settlement governance. They facilitate communication, translate institutional priorities, mobilise communities, and manage local tensions, thereby contributing to the everyday functioning of governance processes. At the same time, their involvement was concentrated primarily within consultation, coordination, and implementation activities, while authority over programme design, resource allocation, and strategic priorities remained institutionally concentrated elsewhere. To account for this dynamic, the study develops the concept of bounded participation, understood as a condition in which responsibilities for communication, consultation, mobilisation, and implementation become institutionally separated from authority over priorities, resources, and strategic decisions. The concept is proposed as one analytical lens for examining humanitarian governance, refugee leadership, and participation by drawing attention to how governance systems may expand opportunities for engagement while maintaining uneven distributions of authority. The findings from Nakivale Refugee Settlement suggest that strengthening refugee participation requires attention not only to opportunities for inclusion but also to the institutional relationships through which influence, accountability, and decision-making authority are organised, with important implications for refugee wellbeing and human security.
Executive Summary After decades of important work resettling millions of vulnerable people, the United States’ refugee resettlement program has experienced drastic shifts since the start of 2025 as a result of anti-refugee polices by the Trump administration. These changes have also wreaked havoc on the refugee-supporting infrastructure — globally, domestically, and locally in refugee-dense cities like Buffalo, New York — that has been assembled over time with great ingenuity and dedication. However, refugee communities will continue to persist in the United States. In the research presented here, we examine long-term economic integration experiences in refugee communities in Buffalo, New York. Employment is central to economic integration and security of refugees in the United States. This study examines employment-related challenges that persist well beyond the initial resettlement period and some of the ways these issues are addressed. It draws on interviews with two types of key informants who regularly support refugees: community leaders and service providers. While there are many success stories to celebrate, the data show that difficulties first encountered during resettlement often continue for years for many individuals in the refugee community, despite the relative strength of the local support infrastructure for refugees both during and following resettlement. These challenges relate partly to the construction of the refugee resettlement program in the past, particularly the programmatic rush to self-sufficiency in a 90-day window after arrival. But they also speak to the difficult nature of the project: remaking a life after profound displacement, often accompanied by substantial language barriers and trauma, in the context of US cities and labor markets which often feature unaffordable or unsafe housing, inaccessible transportation, low wages, and employment precarity. We highlight four themes from our data – language barriers, job search strategies, navigating US systems, and efforts to improve job quality – as well as differences across respondents. The policy recommendations we offer are made with an eye toward a revived and robust refugee resettlement program in the future. However, understanding and addressing the challenges refugee communities continue to face after years in the US is still a living project. Thus, our recommendations also build on a recognition that the long-term economic integration of refugees has always been a project not fully contained or determined by federal programs, and that there is ample room to enhance state and local support in addressing the employment challenges refugees experience in the long term. We identify three areas for policy improvement to strengthen refugee economic integration. First, we hope that a robust federal refugee resettlement program will return in the future. If that happens, we should take the opportunity to build in improvements to the resettlement period, which could help address long-term employment challenges, including extended and expanded language and job support and more opportunities for retraining and recertifications. Second, expanding support for refugee-led community organizations and adopting more innovative approaches could help address some of the long-term challenges. These reforms could be integrated into future versions of federal programs, but there is also ample opportunity in the current moment for such support from state and local sources. Third, while it may sound counterintuitive, we recommend that state, local, and community programs think about refugees less as “refugees” first and instead work to integrate refugees into existing programming aimed at non-refugee households. Although there are unique aspects to refugee community members, many of the challenges they face are problems also shared by a much larger segment of the US population. We recommend thinking about poverty-alleviation and employment supports more broadly, and then, subsequently thinking about what additional language, cultural tailoring or outreach by trusted partners may be necessary to ensure reaching refugee community members.
