Background

Through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, the United States accepts tens of thousands of refugees each year. Before coming to the United States as refugees, individuals undergo a long and arduous process: they must prove they either have been persecuted or have a well-founded fear of persecution based on their political opinion, race, nationality, religion, or membership to a particular social group; and they must complete numerous security and medical checks. Once in the United States, the U.S. Department of State helps resettle refugees in communities throughout the country where they revitalize local communities and economies, and reduce local crime rates. Currently, the Trump administration has suspended all refugee admissions. 

FOIA Request and Data Received

This Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request obtained demographic data about each refugee resettled in U.S. cities and states throughout the country from October 1, 2017, through December 31, 2024. The data obtained includes individuals’ nationality, age, gender, education level, native language, and English proficiency level. 

The Council developed a tool using this dataset to show state-level demographic data of these refugees. To protect the privacy of refugees, in instances where fewer than fifty individuals were resettled in a certain locality, an individual’s data is not disclosed. Click on a state to see the total population of refugees resettled in that state, as well as the breakdowns of their demographics, education, and English proficiency levels. The tool displays withheld data as “Redacted” or “Masked.”  

If you are interested in accessing more data from this dataset, please contact [email protected]. 

Timeline

Friday, April 25, 2024 
The Council Files a FOIA Request on City-Level Data on Refugee Resettlement 

The U.S. Department of State publishes aggregate data showing the number of refugees that settle in each state. The agency used to publish city-level data on refugee resettlement up until 2018, but stopped.  

In April 2024, the Council identified that the lack of city-level data on refugee resettlement presented challenges to local communities and researchers. Local communities need more granular information than what is available at the state level to welcome refugees and help them establish lives in such communities. Also, researchers need more localized data to analyze refugees’ impacts on communities.  

The Council’s Transparency and Research teams requested this information from the Department of State under FOIA. The request sought both data on refugees admitted to the United States from October 2017 to the end of the search including resettlement city, resettlement state, demographic data, education level, native language, English proficiency, and previous occupation; as well as data dictionaries.  

Wednesday, July 17, 2024  
The Council Sues the State Department 

In July 2024, having received no response from the Department of State, the Council filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia under FOIA to compel the agency to provide the requested data. After several months of negotiation, the parties reached an agreement about what subset of requested data could be released while protecting the personal identity of refugees in small communities.  

Friday, January 17, 2025 
The State Department Provides the Council with Data  

The State Department provided the Council with six spreadsheets. Each spreadsheet contains individual-level demographic data for all refugees resettled in the United States between October 1, 2017, and December 31, 2024, organized by fiscal year or calendar year at the national-level, state-level, and city-level. The demographic data includes nationality, gender, age at admission, highest level of education, native language, and oral and written English proficiency. Most of this data was not previously available to the public.  

In order to protect the privacy of refugees, the Department of State did not disclose an individual’s nationality, gender, age, and native language when fewer than ten individuals (nine or less) were resettled in a particular location (state, locality, or the United States as whole) in a certain year. This means that, for example, if less than ten individuals of a certain nationality were resettled in a certain city in a given year, their nationality, gender, age at admission, and native language were redacted in the city-level release. 

Due to privacy concerns, the Council is taking extra precautions when releasing the data including increasing the threshold to withhold demographic data from ten to fifty, and only publicly releasing aggregate data at the national and state levels.