‘Mission South Africa’: Why Donald Trump is offering white Afrikaners refugee status

The administration has also provided security escorts to officials conducting interviews of potential refugees.

By mid-April, US officials on the ground in South Africa will “propose long-term solutions, to ensure the successful implementation of the president’s vision for the dignified resettlement of eligible Afrikaner applicants”, according to one memo sent from the embassy in Pretoria to the State Department in Washington this month.

The administration’s focus on white Afrikaners comes as it effectively bans the entry of other refugees — including about 20,000 people from countries such as Afghanistan, Congo and Syria who were ready to travel to the US before Trump took office. In court filings about those other refugees, the administration has argued that core functions of the refugee programme had been “terminated” after the president’s ban, so it did not have the resources to take in any more people.

“There’s no subtext and nothing subtle about the way this administration’s immigration and refugee policy has obvious racial and racist overtones,” said Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America’s Voice. “While they seek to single out Afrikaners for special treatment, they simultaneously want us to think mostly black and brown vetted newcomers are dangerous despite their background checks and all evidence to the contrary.”

The programme also inserts the United States into a charged debate inside South Africa, where some members of the white Afrikaner minority have begun a campaign to suggest that they are the true victims in post-apartheid South Africa. Under apartheid, a white minority government discriminated against South Africans of colour, and brutality and violence flourished, leading to torture, disappearances and murder.

There have been murders of white farmers, the focus of the Afrikaner grievances, but police statistics show they are not any more vulnerable to violent crime than others in the country. In South Africa, more than 90% of the population comes from racial groups persecuted by the racist apartheid regime.

In a statement, the State Department said it was focused on resettling Afrikaners who have been “victims of unjust racial discrimination”. The agency confirmed that it had begun interviewing applicants and said they would need to pass “stringent background and security checks”.

The decision to unleash resources for Afrikaners just starting the refugee process, while stonewalling court demands to process those fleeing other countries who have already been cleared for travel, risks upending an American refugee programme that has been the foundation of the United States’ role for the vulnerable, according to resettlement officials.

“The government clearly has the ability to process applications when it wants to,” said Melissa Keaney, a senior supervising attorney for the International Refugee Assistance Project, the group representing plaintiffs trying to restart refugee processing.

Trump signed an executive order suspending refugee admissions on his first day in office, arguing that welcoming refugees could compromise resources for Americans. He added that future versions of the programme should prioritise “only those refugees who can fully and appropriately assimilate into the United States”.

A federal judge in Seattle later temporarily blocked that executive order and instructed the administration to restore the refugee programme. But the Trump administration still cut contracts with organisations that assist those applying for refugee status overseas, reducing the infrastructure needed to support people seeking refuge in the United States.

An appeals court ruled last week that the administration must admit those thousands of people who were granted refugee status before Trump entered office, but also declined to stop him from halting the admission of new refugees.

The Justice Department has for weeks deflected demands from refugee advocates accusing the administration of sidestepping the court order and delaying the process of almost every refugee previously granted a ticket to come to the United States. The Trump administration has said it has allowed a limited number of refugees who were vetted to enter the country, although the State Department declined to provide a number.

Lawyers for the Justice Department have argued both that the administration now lacks resources to help thousands of refugees and that in restarting the programme the government reserves the right to “do so in a manner that reflects administration priorities”.

Trump has made clear what those priorities were when he created a refugee carve-out for white Afrikaners. Trump at the time accused the South African government of confiscating the land of white Afrikaners, backing a long-held conspiracy theory about the mistreatment of white South Africans in the post-apartheid era.

Trump was referring to a recent policy signed into law by the South African government, known as the Expropriation Act. It repeals an apartheid-era law and allows the government in certain instances to acquire privately held land in the public interest, without paying compensation, only after a justification process subject to judicial review.

Trump and his allies have for years echoed the grievances of Afrikaners. During his first term, Trump directed the State Department to investigate land seizures and “the large-scale killing of farmers”. Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa but is not of Afrikaner descent, has also falsely claimed that white farmers in South Africa were being killed every day.

Despite the claims, white people own half of South Africa’s land while making up just 7% of the country’s population. Police statistics do not show that they are any more vulnerable to violent crime than other people in the nation.

Ernst Roets, former executive director of the Afrikaner Foundation, which lobbies for international support of the interests of Afrikaners, said many of his peers felt seen by Trump.

But he said the creation of the new refugee programme had elicited debate among Afrikaners. Many do not want to leave their home, Roets said, but want the US to back their efforts to claim “self-governance” in South Africa.

“I don’t know anyone — no one I’m aware of — that plans to move to America,” Roets said. “People who want to come to America, we would support that. If people want to relocate to America, the farmers or Afrikaners, we think they would make good Americans.

“There’s a good fit,” he added.

Zumbe Baruti, a Congolese refugee living in South Carolina, said he spent decades in a refugee camp in Africa waiting for his turn to be accepted.

“Those white Africans are allowed to enter the United States, but black Africans are denied entry to the United States,” Baruti, 29, said in Swahili. He said the pivot away from refugees who have waited in camps for years and to Afrikaners was a form of “discrimination”.

Baruti, a member of the Bembe people in Congo, fled ethnic violence in the nation when he was a child. He was granted refugee status in 2023, but his wife and three children — the oldest 6 years old and the youngest just 2 — had yet to clear security vetting. He entered the United States two years ago, focused on getting a job, saving money and immediately applying for his family to join him.

When he entered, he said he was told by advisers helping him with his application that his family would most likely join him in two years.

He said that seemed unlikely as Trump turned his focus elsewhere.

“Regarding my family,” Baruti said, “hope has diminished.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Hamed Aleaziz

Photographs by: Joao Silva, Juan Diego Reyes and Getty Images

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