The IOM and the Trump administration: a turning point in the organization’s history?  

Guest post by Sabine Dini, Shoshana Fine & Antoine Pécoud. Sabine Dini is an associate professor of political science at the University of Clermont-Ferrand and teaches at Sciences Po Paris. She is a fellow of the Institut Convergences Migrations (ICM). She has worked as a consultant on migration, humanitarian issues, security, and development for international organizations including the IOM, UNHCR, and the World Bank Group. Shoshana Fine is Associate Professor at the European School of Political and Social Sciences and a fellow of the Institut Convergences Migrations (ICM). Her research interests are in migration, borders, the politics of law and international organizations. Antoine Pécoud is professor of sociology at the University of Sorbonne Paris Nord, director of the POLICY department at the Institut Convergences Migrations (ICM) and a member of the Institut universitaire de France. He holds a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Oxford (2002) and a HDR from the University of Paris 7 (2011).

This post is part of a collaboration between Border Criminologies and Geopolitics that seeks to promote open access platforms. The full article is free to download. 

On March 18, 2025, the IOM issued a statement announcing the lay-off of 6,000 staff members of the almost 22,000 staff who were working for the IOM by the end of 2024 following ‘a major decrease of US funding worldwide’ (a 30% reduction of its budget). This includes 20% of the Geneva-based headquarter staff, as well as 3,000 employees in charge of the refugee resettlement program to the United States (dismantled by the Trump administration). Aside from budgetary issues, and like many other organisations, the IOM is also scrubbing its website from references to issues like gender-based violence or reproductive rights.  

These developments are not isolated. UNHCR has also been reported to envisage cuts of up to 6,000 workers, and the whole humanitarian sector is shaken by the reduction of the USAID budget. The Trump administration also sent several UN agencies a questionnaire about their projects, in a move that could lead to further funding cuts. We may therefore witness the first steps of a durable crisis, which will affect not only the budget of international organizations, but also their mandate - and multilateralism at large. 

For the IOM, this is particularly troubling because it has maintained close ties to the US ever since its creation in 1951. At the time, the US feared communist influence inside the UN and established IOM as a counterweight to UNHCR. The IOM has managed to conciliate this US dependence with an expansion of its mandate, for instance by welcoming more member states (including Russia and China, in 2016 and 2021 respectively) and by joining the UN in 2016. It is now at the heart of global migration governance, notably as the leading agency in the UN Migration Network and the implementation of the 2018 Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Responsible Migration. But budget-wise, the US remains the principal donor. 

The first Trump presidency had already created some tensions. In 2017, after Trump’s Executive Order entitled ‘Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States’ (also known as the ‘Muslim Ban’), the IOM and the UNHCR issued a statement to criticize the reduction of the US refugee resettlement program. The IOM also opposed the decision to construct a wall at the US-Mexico border. And in 2018, the Trump-backed candidate, Ken Isaacs, lost IOM’s directorship to Antonio Vitorino - making it only the second time in the organisation’s history that a non-American occupied this position. Also, in 2018, the US was among the key states that withdrew from the IOM-coordinated negotiations over the Global Compact.

The second Trump presidency is likely to create new challenges for the IOM, not least because of the political profile of its director. Elected in 2023, Amy Pope benefited from the support of the Biden administration to oust Vitorino, who was in the running for a second mandate. This came as no surprise: Pope served as Deputy Homeland Security Advisor and Deputy Assistant to the President at the White House National Security Council during the Obama administration, which led her to oppose Donald Trump – for instance when she accused him of undermining the national security of the United States in 2017. In light of the current US President’s revengeful behaviour, this makes for a delicate situation. 

But there are also more fundamental divergences. The IOM is known for its ‘migration management’ slogan, a rational and evidence-based approach according to which migration governance should enable a ‘triple-win’: receiving states would achieve border control while securing access to foreign workforce, states in the Global South would reap the development benefits of migration (through remittances in particular), and humanitarian programs would protect migrants from abuses (like trafficking). This depoliticized rhetoric has enabled the IOM to put migration on the multilateral agenda without hurting states’ sovereign aspirations.  

In 2024, Amy Pope thus criticized policies based on anecdotes, fake news or political motivations, in a clear allusion to Trump’s electoral campaign. In January 2025, she also blamed Trump’s mass deportation plans for being neither feasible nor productive. Likewise, in a report on misinformation, the IOM argued that Trump’s ‘provocative and harmful remarks’ contributed to false narratives – and therefore to bad policy. In other words, Trump’s brutal, one-sided and somewhat nationalist stance on immigration clashes with the IOM’s technocratic approach.  

To some extent, the difference is merely cosmetic. Trump’s strategy in terms of expulsions, for instance, displays some continuity with his predecessor, and it is therefore unclear why the IOM would suddenly find unacceptable the politics of the American government at its southern border. Indeed, critical voices have long blamed the IOM for its lack of commitment to human rights, and for aligning itself on the security agenda of its key donor states in the Global North.  

Yet, for the IOM, cosmetics are important: as a UN body, it must work with all countries and develop a supposedly balanced and humane approach to distance itself from exclusively control-oriented policies – an objective jeopardized by the Trumpian turn of the US government towards violent and exclusionary practices. 

In February 2025, the IOM thus had to deny rumors according to which it contributed to Trump’s plan to deport migrants to Guantanamo – as involvement in this heavily criticized and condemned process would obviously hurt its reputation. Nevertheless, the IOM still actively participates in ongoing expulsions. For example, both the IOM and the UNHCR are looking for solutions for Asian migrants expelled to Panama by the US in early 2025. While NGOs have accused the IOM of complicity with these inhuman measures, the organization has put forward its usual ‘pragmatic’ defense, according to which the deported would be worse off without its intervention. 

Likewise, the IOM had to deny its ambition to take over from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) after this UN agency became unable to fulfil its mission in Gaza. It also announced that it would not take part in the forced displacement or evacuation of the population of Gaza – thereby excluding an involvement in Trump’s highly-contested projects for the region.  

In February 2025, the IOM appointed Michele Sison, a senior diplomat from the State Department, at its Washington office, in a move to reset its relationships with the American government. But the path is narrow: the harsher the Trump administration, the more difficult it will be for the IOM to conciliate its financial and political dependency upon the US with its obligations to all UN member states.  

Whether it can resist doing the dirty work for its richest and most powerful member-states is a question that pervades the whole history of the IOM – and that will certainly make for renew and acute dilemmas in the four years to come.

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