Nearly 3,500 evangelical Christians have joined World Relief in a direct appeal to President Donald Trump: as he sets the annual refugee ceiling for Fiscal Year 2027, put Christians and other religious minorities fleeing persecution at the front of the line.

The petition, delivered as the White House approaches its deadline to set the yearly admissions number, asks the president to honor what the signers describe as his own first-term precedent — when his administration made international religious liberty a stated priority and created a specific focus for refugees who had fled religious persecution.

Matthew Soerens, World Relief's vice president of advocacy and policy, framed the request as a matter of consistency rather than partisanship. “This letter isn't necessarily asking President Trump to be like Joe Biden, Barack Obama or George Bush,” Soerens said. “It's asking him to be consistent with his own policies from his first administration, when he made international religious liberty a priority.”

Soerens pressed the moral case further: “As a matter of faith, the mandate is clear. As a matter of patriotism, for a nation built by immigrants fleeing persecution on account of their faith, closing the door to this generation of refugees is unconscionable.”

World Relief president and CEO Myal Greene called the pending decision a “crossroads,” adding, “We can rectify a great moral wrong by again admitting refugees who have experienced the worst this world has to offer.”

The appeal lands at a moment of acute need. Nigeria's Christians continue to face relentless violence, and believers fleeing persecution in countries across the Middle East, Asia, and Africa have seen America's door narrow. According to World Relief, polling shows 70 percent of evangelical Christians — including roughly two-thirds of those who voted for Trump in 2024 — believe the United States has a moral responsibility to accept refugees, and 84 percent of pastors say Christians fleeing persecution for their faith should be prioritized.

Since the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program began in 1980, an average of 73,500 refugees have been resettled in America each year. For persecuted believers, that program has often been the difference between life and death — the final open door after every other door closed.