White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded May 9 to a question about White South Africans expected to be given refuge in the United States.(c) 2025 , The Washington Post
By Teo Armus, Emily Wax-Thibodeaux — A group of nearly 50 White South Africans landed at Dulles International Airport on Monday as refugees, coming to the United States under a humanitarian designation meant for people fleeing war or persecution that the Trump administration has suspended for all other groups worldwide.
Some held young children and waved small American flags they were given upon arrival, and red, white and blue balloons adorned the walls. President Donald Trump has said the Afrikaners – a minority group descended from Dutch settlers in South Africa – are facing racial discrimination due to a land redistribution law in that country that seeks to correct an imbalance in property ownership stemming from four decades of apartheid rule. No land seizures have been carried out under that law.
But Trump claimed Monday that a genocide was taking place in South Africa.
“Farmers are being killed,” the president said at a news conference. “They happen to be White. Whether they’re White or Black, makes no difference to me. But White farmers are being brutally killed and their land is being confiscated in South Africa.”
South African officials have called the effort to cast the Afrikaner families as refugees a “politically motivated” ploy “designed to question South Africa’s constitutional democracy.”
“They can’t provide any proof of any prosecution because there’s not of any,” Ronald Lamola, the country’s international relations and cooperation minister, said at a Monday news conference in Pretoria, South Africa’s administrative capital. “There is not any form of persecution to White South Africans.”
Any such claims are “disinformation” Lamola said.
The 49 Afrikaners landed at Dulles in Northern Virginia shortly after 12 p.m. Monday. From there, they were set to board connecting flights to 10 states, where they will be resettled by local refugee organizations, according to three government officials familiar with the plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to share details of the preparations. About 11 others were scheduled to board the plane, but State Department officials prevented them from doing so due to paperwork issues, two of the people familiar with the matter said.
Refugees are a distinct class of people who have been forced to flee their home country after they have been persecuted or fear persecution – usually death – because of their race, religion, nationality, politics or membership in a particular social group.
They must go through strict vetting by U.S. officials and often wait up to several years before being allowed to enter the country, where they are eligible for government services and a path to citizenship. No South Africans were resettled as refugees in the U.S. as refugees in fiscal 2024, according to government data.
In his first week in office, Trump suspended all refugee admissions to the U.S. and slashed funding for resettlement groups that help refugees find jobs and housing across the country.
A Jan. 20 executive order said the country “lacks the ability to absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees, into its communities in a manner that does not compromise the availability of resources for Americans, that protects their safety and security, and that ensures the appropriate assimilation of refugees.”
A State Department memo obtained by The Washington Post said that most of arriving Afrikaners “have witnessed or experienced extreme violence with a racial nexus,” including home invasions, murders or carjackings that took place up to 25 years ago.
“This initial cohort of refugees has frequently expressed fear of remaining in South Africa due to race-based violence or other severe harm,” the memo said. “Many have also said that they do not trust the police, citing that law enforcement has not adequately investigated crimes against Afrikaners.”
On Friday, Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, told reporters that “what’s happening in South Africa fits the textbook definition of why the refugee program was created. This is persecution based on a protected characteristic, in this case, race.”
Advocates for other refugees seeking safe harbor in the U.S. expressed outrage over the effort.
Shawn VanDiver, president of #AfghanEvac – a nonprofit group whose volunteers include U.S. veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – said the preference given to White South Africans creates the appearance that the U.S. government can’t be trusted when it promises a secure life in the U.S. to those who have risked their lives for the country during times of war.
VanDiver’s group works to help Afghans who worked for the U.S. as translators, drivers and other roles during the war and are now worried about Taliban retribution gain entry into the country.
“It’s not just immoral and disgusting. It’s a threat to our national security abroad,” he said of the Trump administration’s effort. “This contrast isn’t just political theater – it’s a fundamental question of whether U.S. refugee policy is rooted in principle or in politics. The hypocrisy is as clear as it is cruel.”
He added that 1,200 Afghans – including more than 200 family members of U.S. service members – are waiting at a U.S. facility in Qatar to be let into the United States.
On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security said that it will end temporary protected status for Afghans.
Maria Corina Vegas, a longtime Venezuelan-American advocate and member of the Miami-Dade Democratic Hispanic caucus, called the preference given to Afrikaners “an offense to any immigrant who has tried to come to make it legally to the U.S.”
“The whole system is being gutted for one person who wants a certain type of refugee,” Vegas said. “There is a really clear agenda here that is counter to the fundamental principals on which America was founded and stood for and once admired around the world.”
Refugee resettlement groups and some of their clients have filed a lawsuit over the suspension of the refugee admissions program.
A federal judge in Seattle ordered last week that the government by Monday must resume refugee case processing at all levels, including at U.S. embassies, and lift suspensions for 12,000 people who had been approved to arrive, with their flights booked, before the halt in resettlement occurred.
It must also begin facilitating travel for people with unexpired medical and security clearances and submit a plan to the judge to renew expired clearances; a compliance report to the court is due by Wednesday.
The South African land redistribution law, which was signed in January, allows for property to be taken away without compensation in some situations, subject to review by a judge.
South African officials have framed the law, the Expropriation Act, as an effort to correct the wrongs of four decades of segregationist apartheid rule, sowing deep racial divisions in the country.
White people in South Africa, who makes up about 7 percent of the country’s population, own about three-quarters of individually owned farms and agricultural holdings, according to South African officials.
Murithi Mutiga, Africa program director for the International Crisis Group, said South Africa’s African National Congress government is widely admired for its efforts to wipe out the legacy of apartheid.
“This is an astonishing and clearly racially motivated policy,” Mutiga said of the Trump administration effort. “Very few policies, apart from the USAID cuts, have attracted as much astonishment and revulsion as this policy, which appears to be racially motivated.”
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Tibelo Timse in Johannesburg contributed to this report.
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