The Trump administration has awarded the New York-based non-profit International Rescue Committee (IRC) a $20 million contract to provide virtual professional advancement services to up to 1,334 eligible refugees admitted during September 2026.
Services provided to refugees by IRC will include “outreach, orientation, intake, eligibility verification, Career Development Planning, navigation, job readiness and pathway-specific training, direct financial assistance, job development, and job placement support.”
The initiative aims to reduce geographic disparities in access to career services while also addressing challenges associated with the recognition of foreign credentials.
The award draws on IRC’s existing nationwide virtual infrastructure and builds on a Biden-era partnership between IRC and the U.S. government to provide virtual assistance to refugees.
IRC, one of the national resettlement agencies historically funded by the U.S. government to assist refugees upon arrival, has long been an outspoken critic of the Trump administration's refugee and foreign aid policies (past and present), while working to reverse them.
ORR-IRC Agreement
The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) – part of the Administration for Children and Families within the Department of Health and Human Services – is entering in a “single-source cooperative agreement” with IRC for the National Virtual Program for Professional Advancement (NVPPA). The year-long project (September 30, 2026, through September 29, 2027), will allow IRC's national Economic Empowerment team to use its nationwide virtual service delivery model to assist these refugees (almost all Afrikaners) regardless of their location or initial resettlement agency.
To that end, IRC has been awarded upfront $20,000,000. These funds are to be used as follows: up to $16,008,000 ($12,000 for each of the 1,334 eligible refugees) towards direct financial assistance for the costs of education and training and the remaining $3,992,000 to support IRC staffing, and other associated costs.
Direct financial assistance to refugees includes the following:
Eligible direct financial assistance will include tuition; degree, certification, licensing, and examination costs; credential evaluation; textbooks and software; uniforms and safety gear; transportation; child care; required equipment; and a vehicle when an approved Career Development Plan establishes that the purchase is necessary for a career goal.
The Trump administration’s stated purpose for this cooperative agreement is to close geographic gaps in access to various professional services, and to help refugees overcome persistent obstacles to foreign credentials recognition. These barriers often push qualified refugees into survival jobs that underuse their skills and professional experience. The agreement aims to enable refugees to resume their previous careers or pursue new ones, while strengthening household self-sufficiency.
Virtual Assistance
The virtual assistance tool made available to refuges is not new: it was launched by IRC in March 2024 in partnership with the Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) under the Biden-Harris administration.
The “Virtual Reception and Placement (VR&P)” case management program was designed as an alternative to the traditional, in-person R&P. VR&P was set to alleviate “capacity constraints on local affiliates and expand USRAP’s [the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program] ability to resettle refugees”. Instead of working through local affiliate offices, VR&P delivers services remotely through case managers. The model sought to relieve capacity constraints at local resettlement offices and reach eligible refugees and other beneficiaries unable to access those offices.
VR&P was modeled after the “award-winning and innovative” model, the Virtual Afghan Placement and Assistance program (VAPA), that was set in motion by PRM, also in partnership with IRC, in March 2022 following the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
In 2024, PRM approved six of the national resettlement agencies to offer VR&P services to certain populations, including Afghan SIV holders, Afghan refugees, and refugees from Latin America.
In FY 2025, the Department of State under the Biden-Harris administration was planning to “further expand partnerships with new resettlement partners and grow its innovative new model of virtual reception and placement services for certain eligible refugees”. These plans were halted by Trump until this new partnership was set in motion with IRC.
The new ORR award draws on IRC’s established virtual delivery capacity, but its purpose differs from that of VR&P: NVPPA focuses on professional advancement, education and training.
Refugee Admissions
Given the composition of recent refugee admissions and the Trump administration’s stated priorities, Afrikaners are likely to constitute most NVPPA participants.
Here’s a quick recap of refugee admissions during the Trump administration:
President Trump ordered the suspension of refugee admissions as soon as he took office in January 2025, subject to exceptions. His February 7 executive order, “Addressing Egregious Actions of The Republic of South Africa”, directed officials to prioritize the resettlement of Afrikaners from South Africa and to admit them on a case-by-case basis while the USRAP remains suspended.
For FY 2026, Trump initially set the refugee ceiling at 7,500, subsequently increasing it to 17,500 in May 2026. Again, prioritizing Afrikaners.
In FY 2025, the United States admitted 38,102 refugees. Of those, 37,596 arrived between October 2024 through January 2025, largely during the Biden-Harris administration; while only 506 arrived from February through September 2025 under the Trump administration.
FY 2026 refugee arrivals totaled 16,292 refugees: 16,287 South Africans and five Afghans. By comparison, the United States admitted 100,034 refugees in FY 2024 under Biden.
Trump has also set FY 2027 refugee ceiling at 17,500 with admissions again allocated “primarily” to Afrikaners from South Africa”, a decision the administration said is “justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest.”
IRC Funding and Government Contributions
David Miliband is director, president & CEO of IRC, and earns more than $1 million per year. Miliband, a former British Labour Party politician of the United Kingdom, has been the head of IRC since 2013.
Born in London, Miliband is the "eldest son of immigrant parents, Belgian-born Marxist sociologist Ralph Miliband and Polish-born Marion Kozak, both from Polish Jewish families. "
IRC was one of the ten resettlement agencies that were funded by the Department of State to help resettled refugees with the following: reception upon arrival; support with housing, food, and clothing; community orientation; English lessons, enrollment in various benefits and welfare programs; referral to social service providers (including health care, employment), etc.
Since taking office in January 2025, the Trump administration suspended and subsequently restructured the refugee resettlement program, curtailed funding to resettlement agencies, and reorganized initial domestic resettlement. A September 30, 2025 presidential determination transferred administration of initial resettlement grants and contracts – the former Reception and Placement (R&P) program – from the State Department to ORR. The revised framework retains certain partnerships with resettlement agencies (like the recent NVPPA one with IRC) while emphasizing greater coordination with state and local jurisdictions.
The Trump administration’s suspension of the refugee resettlement program in FY 2025, followed by a significant drop in FY 2026 refugee ceiling, reduced IRC’s resettlement funding. But these cuts were only part of a wider financial squeeze. IRC reported "significant funding cuts" of more than $400 million, mostly due to the administration's cancellation of about 83 percent of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) grants in early 2025. Other major donors, including the United Kingdom and Germany, followed suit and scaled back their aid, deepening the organization's losses.
Here’s a look at the share of IRC’s budget coming from government funding (i.e. American taxpayers) and the salary of its Director/President/CEO, David Miliband, the past three years. The data was retrieved from publicly available Form 990 federal tax returns available on IRC’s website.
- Form 990: FY 2025
- Contributions and Grants: $ 1,270,063,152
- Government grants (contributions): $ 746,602,240 (59 percent of total revenue)
- Compensation: David Miliband, director, CEO, president. Total: $1,188,792.
- Form 990: FY 2024
- Contributions and Grants: $1,494,075,415
- Government grants (contributions): $966,814,388 (65 percent)
- Compensation: David Miliband, director, CEO, president. Total: $1,246,992.
- 990 Form: FY 2023
- Contributions and Grants: $1,297,583,900
- Government grants (contributions): $831,319,282 (64 percent)
- Compensation: David Miliband, director, CEO, president. Total: $1,253,728.
IRC and Miliband Critical of Trump Policies
Miliband and other senior IRC staff have publicly criticized President Trump's refugee and asylum policies, as well as cuts to U.S. foreign aid, during both of his administrations.
The first Trump administration
In January 2017, the IRC called on its supporters to: "Oppose President's Trump's ban on refugees," arguing that "[t]hese changes fly in the face of our country's best values of freedom, fairness and compassion.” The organization urged its supporters to contact their members of Congress and oppose what it described as an “unjust refugee Executive Order.”
In March 2017, Miliband described the Trump administration’s suspension of refugee resettlement while it reassessed the refugee-vetting system as “cruel and counterproductive.” He argued that the policy stranded “the most vulnerable and most vetted people in the world”, disputed the administration’s characterization of the refugee screening process, and warned that it damaged America’s international reputation.
In April 2019, in what was described as "scathing critique of the Trump administration's handling of border issues", Miliband told the British newspaper, the Guardian that the U.S. government was “failing in its most basic responsibilities, never mind as a global leader but as a local example of how a civilized country should behave". He also dismissed the national emergency Trump declared to support the construction of a border wall as a "manufactured crisis".
After the Trump administration set the FY 2020 refugee ceiling at 18,000, Miliband said: "This is a very sad day for America."
In a January 20, 2020, Newsweek op-ed Miliband wrote:
Refugee resettlement has traditionally been a bipartisan issue. … Refugees are referred first by the United Nations to identify their vulnerable refugee status, for example victims of torture or those with urgent medical issues. … The Trump administration, however, has upended that commitment in three ways. First, it has reduced the number of refugees to be admitted to 18,000, a dramatic departure from historic norms. Furthermore, it has halted U.N. referrals — all but eliminating the needs-based bias of the program. Lastly, it has tried to give localities a choice about whether they want to be part of the federal system.
The second Trump administration
On January 21,2025, Miliband called the suspension of the refugee resettlement program by the Trump administration a “backward step for refugees and for America.” He defended refugee resettlement as an “orderly, cost-effective way of offering life-saving protection to some of the most vulnerable people in the world.”
In April 2025, Miliband described the termination of thousands of USAID and State Department grants and contracts as a “devastating blow” to IRC clients who depended on U.S. taxpayer-funded services.
In February 2026 Miliband told Bloomberg that the United States served as an anchor of the global system, adding that “the anchor’s being pulled up [by Trump].”
During a June 2026 visit to Ukraine, he highlighted the impact of U.S. aid reductions. Those cuts halved the IRC's budget in the country from $40 million last year to an estimated $20 million in 2027. He urged politicians not to forget “the brutality and strain that's being faced by millions of Ukrainians."
More recently, in an exclusive interview with British newspaper, The Independent, published on September 23, 2026, Miliband criticized U.S. aid cuts affecting the IRC’s operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In his view, those cuts are to blame for the deadly Ebola outbreak in DR Congo which resulted in the death of more than 3,000 people since May.