A new report by two American Christian organisations has discovered that zero individuals claiming asylum on grounds of religious persecution have been accepted for resettlement in the United States this year.

“We anticipate that [fiscal year] 2026 will be the first year in at least a quarter century, and likely in the entire history of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, in which persecuted religious minorities have been completely shut out,” the ‘State of the Golden Door’ report found.

The fourth edition of the report, which is jointly produced by World Relief and Open Doors US, noted that while 29,478 refugees had been resettled in 2024 from countries where the persecution of Christians is the highest, this figure dropped to 9,916 in 2025, and then to zero in 2026, in which the only refugee arrivals have come from South Africa.

“The ‘golden door’ to those fleeing religious persecution has been effectively closed,” the authors wrote.

The report includes the testimony of Iranian-American pastor Ara Torosian, who himself arrived in the States as a refugee in 2010, and at least 19 of whose fellow Iranian congregants were detained by US immigration services over the past year. It references the examples of two of them, Marjan and Reza, whose story made headlines last year, after a video showed Marjan having a panic attack as her husband was led away by immigration enforcement agents.

The report also notes how over 14,000 Iranian refugees – the vast majority of whom are believed to be Christians – remain “in limbo” in Austria, after the closure of a resettlement support centre there, where refugees awaiting resettlement to the United States had previously been processed.

It also raises concerns about the possible “refoulement” of refugees to the countries from which they fled, referencing the case of Artemis Ghasemzadeh, an Iranian Christian who was deported from the United States to Panama, before being resettled in Canada, after being sponsored by a Christian couple there. 

“Some agreements have resulted in people being repatriated by the third country back to the country where they initially fled persecution,” the report states. “World Relief and Open Doors US firmly believe that returning someone to a place of persecution — however indirectly — is a stark violation of the principles on which our nation was founded, and in direct contradiction to our beliefs as Christians.”

The report ends by calling on Christians to pray and advocate for fellow Christian refugees, “to ensure that those persecuted for their faith continue to have access to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program alongside those persecuted for other reasons recognized by U.S. and international law”.

You can read the full report here.