Why President-elect Trump should defend persecuted Christians

President-elect Trump, who won with the majority of Christian votes this election, has repeatedly pledged to defend Christians from persecution. He also reiterated in a post-election interview that he supports legal immigration: “We want people to come in … but they have to come in with love for the country. They have to come in legally,”

If President-elect Trump wants legally-admitted immigrants who love America and also wants to defend persecuted Christians, he should love the U.S. refugee resettlement program. 

Established with broad, bipartisan congressional support in 1980, the U.S. refugee resettlement program has brought more than 3.5 million individuals to the U.S. who fled a well-founded fear of persecution in their countries of origin. In the past decade, the majority of these refugees have been Christians, including many who were persecuted particularly because of their faith.

President-elect Trump has rightly affirmed the need for secure borders and keeping out terrorists, and as advocates for persecuted Christians, we certainly share his commitment to ensuring those who would persecute others cannot access the United States. 

Thankfully, as the Heritage Foundation has affirmed, “refugees undergo more vetting than any other immigrants to the U.S.” and various elements of the program make it “an unattractive option for terrorists trying to infiltrate the U.S.” Since the Refugee Act was signed into law, there’s not been a single American life lost in an Islamist terrorist attack perpetrated by an individual admitted through the refugee resettlement program. Our country has a track-record of being both compassionate and secure. Legal immigration processes with careful vetting like the refugee program are an important complement to secure borders to halt illegal immigration — and it’s also one of the central ways that our country stands with persecuted Christians and other religious minorities.

The need for the U.S. to offer refuge to those persecuted for their faith has never been greater. One in seven Christians face significant persecution or discrimination because of their faith. Concurrently, over 120 million people globally have been displaced due to persecution, violence and human rights abuses. Those harsh realities are related, as many of those persecuted ultimately flee their homelands — including some who seek refuge in the United States. 

Christian voters are praying that President-elect Trump will recognize the connections between international religious freedom and forced migration, documented in a new report from Open Doors US and World Relief. 

When our organizations published the first version of this report in 2020, the Trump administration had significantly restricted refugee resettlement, closing the door on those persecuted for their Christian faith along with others. By the end of 2022, under the Biden administration, those numbers had rebounded only marginally.

But the updated State of the Golden Door report tells a much more encouraging story. From the low point of 2020 — when just 5,390 Christian refugees were resettled to the U.S. from the 50 countries where Christians face the most severe threats of persecution — the number of Christian refugees has increased by 447%. 29,493 Christian refugees from these countries were resettled in fiscal year 2024. 

Those are significant numbers, but behind every number is a story: an individual whom American Christians recognize as a brother or sister in Christ, whose life was at risk because of their faith but who is now safe and rebuilding a life free to worship and practice their faith.

Individuals like Souzan, whose underground Bible study drew the attention of the repressive Iranian regime. She escaped to Indonesia and spent 12 years there before finally being resettled to Spokane, Washington, in September 2023. She was one of 342 Iranian Christians resettled to the U.S. that year. That’s a remarkable increase of more than 500% over the number of Iranian Christians resettled in 2020 — but still well below the thousands of Iranian Christians who were welcomed to the United States in 2016. 

President-elect Trump’s recent affirmation of his belief in legal immigration gives us hope that he will reconsider his campaign pledge to suspend refugee resettlement, or at least ensure that this suspension is only temporary. After all, there are few who love America more than those who experience our country’s constitutionally-guaranteed religious freedom after having been denied it in their countries of birth.

Most Christian voters supported President-elect Trump’s re-election. Most also believe that the U.S. has a moral responsibility to accept refugees, including 71% of all U.S. Evangelical Christians and 61 percent of evangelicals who voted for President Trump in 2020.

The U.S. must stand for religious freedom around the world. And we must not slam shut the doors on those fleeing persecution on account of their faith abroad. We’re praying that President-elect Trump will indeed be a champion for persecuted Christians by keeping open the “golden door” to those fleeing persecution and yearning to breathe free.