This article argues that structural deregulation of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (“USRAP”) during the first Trump Administration paradoxically had significant regulatory effects on civil society. Building on the framework introduced by legal scholars Jody Freeman and Sharon Jacobs, which defines structural deregulation as the deliberate systematic weakening of executive agency capabilities, this article extends their theory to public-private partnerships like the USRAP. It argues that such structural attacks on state capacity can serve as a form of social regulation—that is, the strategic effort to reshape civil society by weakening or eliminating organizations and communities deemed undesirable or oppositional to government policy. The article analyzes how deliberate reductions in staffing, resources, expertise, and reputation hampered the USRAP’s effectiveness and, in turn, destabilized refugee resettlement non-profits, refugee communities, and broader civil society organizations that rely on refugee admissions. These cuts triggered cascading harms—such as office closures, loss of community support infrastructure, and disruptions in healthcare, housing, and employment services—demonstrating how weakening bureaucratic capacity can be used to marginalize vulnerable populations and suppress dissent. Refugee-serving organizations, many of which promote humanitarian values and resist exclusionary policy agendas, were a particular target. The use of structural deregulation to erode ideologically opposed civil society actors is a hallmark tactic of authoritarian governance. As similar strategies reemerge under the second Trump Administration across a wider range of agencies, this article calls for a re-examination of regulatory theory to account for how attacks on administrative infrastructure can be used to indirectly control civil society.

Continue reading The Relationship Between Structual Deregulation and Social Regulation: A Case Study of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program