How many Muslim refugees were admitted to the US during Obama's administrations and how does that compare to other administrations?
Executive summary
A clear, single-number answer is not available in the supplied reporting: the sources document that the Obama administration admitted a large number of Muslim refugees in specific years and that Muslim refugees made up sizable shares of admissions (for example, 38,901 Muslim refugees in FY2016, about 46% of that year’s total) but do not provide a single, consolidated total for all Muslim refugees admitted across both Obama terms that can be cited from these documents [1] [2]. Comparisons to the Trump years show both a sharp drop in overall refugee admissions under Trump and varying shares of Muslims among those admitted, so any direct apples-to-apples multi-year Muslim-refugee totals require combining datasets that are not fully provided here [3] [4].
1. Obama-era peaks and the clearest datapoints
The most concrete figure available in the reporting is fiscal year 2016, when 38,901 Muslim refugees entered the United States—about 46% of the roughly 85,000 refugees resettled that year—making 2016 a record year for Muslim refugee admissions under Obama [1] [2]. The Obama administration set and largely met high refugee ceilings in its final years, with an 85,000 ceiling for FY2016 and a 110,000 goal for FY2017 [3] [5]. These ceilings and the composition of origin countries—Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Syria and Somalia among the top sources in late Obama years—help explain why Muslim refugees made up a large share in 2016 [2].
2. Broader patterns across Obama’s terms (shares, not a single total)
Analyses that break admissions into windows find that Muslims accounted for roughly 23% of refugees in the first three years of Obama’s first term and about 40% in the first three years of his second term, according to the Center for Immigration Studies’ (CIS) comparison of three-year windows—figures that reflect shifts in origin countries and Administration ceilings but are presented as period shares rather than a summed Muslim headcount for the entire presidency [4]. Annual admissions under Obama varied—74,654 in 2009, a dip in 2011 to 56,424, and then rises toward the later years—so aggregating a reliable Muslim-total requires year-by-year religious-composition data that is not fully tabulated in the supplied reporting [6].
3. Comparison with the Trump administration: fewer refugees overall, mixed shares
Under Trump the total number of refugees admitted fell sharply; by Sept. 2019 about 76,200 refugees had been admitted since his inauguration, compared with nearly 85,000 in FY2016 alone under Obama [3]. CIS notes that in Trump’s early years Muslims accounted for over 22% of admissions in a three-year window, and other CIS snapshots report a 32% Muslim share in the first 11 months of Trump’s term—demonstrating that the Muslim share varied year-to-year even as absolute totals declined under Trump [4] [7]. The decisive change between administrations is therefore both in scale—fewer total refugees under Trump—and in shifting regional/country-of-origin mixes that changed the religious composition of arrivals [3] [8].
4. Syrian intake and partisan flashpoints
Reporting highlights Syria as a focal point: in 2016 the Obama administration admitted 12,587 Syrians, nearly all of whom were Muslim, a fact that pushed the Muslim share higher that year and became a political flashpoint in congressional and presidential debates [1] [9]. Some partisan outlets and lawmakers used these composition facts to argue policy implications; the supplied sources include both neutral data summaries (Pew, CIS) and politically charged commentary (senatorial press material) that must be read as advocacy as well as evidence [1] [9].
5. Limits of the public record in the supplied reporting
The supplied reporting allows confident statements about annual compositions (notably FY2016) and three-year shares for administrative windows, and it documents the dramatic overall decline in refugee admissions under Trump, but it does not provide a single, source-cited sum of all Muslim refugees across the entire Obama presidency—so a precise multi-year total cannot be asserted from these documents alone without further dataset aggregation from State Department yearly detailed tables [1] [4] [3].