In just five months of administration, the Trump administration has been promoting a drastic change in U.S. foreign policy, with especially worrying impacts on the country's humanitarian infrastructure. The core of this reorientation lies in the proposal to transform the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) into a subordinate instrument of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), aimed at facilitating deportations instead of protecting displaced people and refugees. This change, which involves the transfer of financial resources from the PRM to removal and "voluntary return" programs coordinated by DHS, signals a profound departure from the North American humanitarian tradition, representing a threat to the historical principles of refugee assistance, according to CEDA, a non-profit organization.

The proposal flouts provisions of the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act, which limits the use of its funds to supporting refugees outside the United States. The allocation of resources for coercive eviction actions not only defies the spirit of the legislation, but also breaks with decades of humanitarian practices based on protection and the search for lasting solutions for the displaced. The creation of a supposed "Remigration Office", articulated within the scope of this reorganization, further exposes the seriousness of the ongoing transformation. The concept of "remigration", associated with extreme right-wing discourses and practices in Europe, inserts into American politics a rhetoric loaded with xenophobia and potentially legitimizing processes of exclusion that are close to what, in other parts of the world, is conventionally denounced as ethnic cleansing.

The process of dismantling the PRM is not limited to budget redirection. It has been accompanied by a planned reduction in personnel, which directly affects the agency's technical capacity to manage humanitarian assistance, conduct specialized diplomacy, and honor international commitments of the United States. This remodeling occurs silently and quickly, without due legislative debate or oversight by Congress, which compromises democratic mechanisms of control over public policies of global scope, according to the study.

The consequences of this realignment are profound. By distorting the function of the PRM and subordinating the humanitarian apparatus to the deportation machine, the government weakens one of the most important instruments of American foreign policy for international stability. The immediate risk is the collapse of vital programs that support millions of vulnerable people around the world, from Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh to Venezuelan asylum seekers and Sudanese refugees.

More broadly, the dismantling of humanitarian infrastructure represents the undermining of legal and moral commitments made over decades, threatening not only the international reputation of the United States but also the effectiveness of its response to global crises. It is, in the final analysis, a setback that compromises the country's role as a responsible actor in the protection of human rights and the promotion of international security.