White South Africans arrive in the U.S. as refugees, protected under Trump’s carve out

American officials welcomed a group of 59 white South Africans at Washington Dulles International Airport Monday afternoon in a ceremony greeting them as refugees, under the argument that they are fleeing discrimination and racially based violence in their home country.

The newly arrived people are from the ethnic minority of Afrikaners, the group of whites who ruled South Africa during apartheid. The dozens that came Monday, including families with young children, arrived via a flight chartered by the State Department. Their resettlement in the U.S. comes as the Trump administration has shut down refugee admissions from almost all other countries, including Afghanistan, Sudan, the Republic of Congo and Myanmar.  

The Afrikaners were met on arrival by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and Department of Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Troy Edgar. 

Landau said that Trump’s pause of the U.S. Refugee program was subject from the very beginning to exceptions when it was determined to be in the interest of the United States. He cited the example of when the refugees “could be assimilated easily into our country.”

“They tell quite harrowing stories of the violence that they faced in South Africa that was not redressed by the authorities by the unjust application of the law,” Landau said. “The United States, as we were proud to say, has stood for equal justice under law and the fair and impartial application of the law.” 

In an executive order issued on February 7, Trump said the United States would help with resettling “Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation.” He condemned what he called the country’s “shocking disregard of its citizens’ rights,” specifically stating the government had seized the agriculture property of white Afrikaners without compensating them. 

The executive order also said the United States would no longer provide aid or assistance to South Africa. It came after a new South African land law went into effect and seems to reflect the views of Elon Musk, the head of the Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency who was born and raised in South Africa.

The law has been depicted by some whites in South Africa, and some on the right in the U.S., as specifically targeting white farmers to take away their land. The South African government and experts dispute this, noting that the law allows for expropriation in cases when the land is not being used or there is a public interest in its redistribution, similar to eminent domain laws in the U.S.

In February, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa pushed back on claims that it was a land grab. “The recently adopted Expropriation Act is not a confiscation instrument, but a constitutionally mandated legal process that ensures public access to land in an equitable and just manner as guided by the constitution,” he wrote on X days before Trump issued his executive order.

Discussion around the law has fit into a larger narrative on the American right about white South African farmers supposedly being killed in large numbers, something Trump talked about in his first term and which Musk has referred to as “genocide,” even though there is not data to support this.

The New York Times reported that 101 out of the 225 people killed on farms in South Africa between April 2020 and March 2024 were Black current or former workers living on farms. Of that number, 53 were farmers, who are usually white.   

The president on Monday said the carve out for South African refugees wasn’t race related. 

“Farmers are being killed,” Trump told reporters. “They happen to be white. Whether they are white or Black makes no difference to me. White farmers are being brutally killed and the land is being confiscated in South Africa.”

White House deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser Stephen Miller defended the admission of white refugees on Friday. 

“What’s happening in South Africa fits the textbook definition of why the refugee program was created,” Miller said. “This is race-based persecution. The refugee program is not intended as a solution for global poverty, and historically, it has been used that way.”

Officials in South Africa have disputed that claim. 

“It is most regrettable that it appears that the resettlement of South Africans to the United States under the guise of being ‘refugees’ is entirely politically motivated and designed to question South Africa’s constitutional democracy; a country which has in fact suffered true persecution under Apartheid rule and has worked tirelessly to prevent such levels of discrimination from ever occurring again,” Chrispin Phiri, a spokesperson for South Africa’s Ministry of International Relations and Cooperation, said in a statement Friday.

Landau reiterated the Trump administration’s stance on Monday. “It is not surprising, unfortunately, that a country from which refugees come does not concede that they are refugees, and unfortunately, you know, the South African government has not done what we feel is appropriate to guarantee the rights of these citizens to live in peace with their fellow South Africans, which is why, under our domestic law, they were given refugee status,” he said. 

Shawn VanDiver, the president of AfghanEvac, a San Diego-based coalition that helps Afghans evacuate and resettle in the U.S., previously told NBC News that the Trump administration does not get to “cherry-pick which victims deserve safety.”

“If Stephen Miller suddenly supports refugee resettlement when it suits a political narrative, fine — but let’s not pretend Afghan allies don’t meet the same legal definition,” he said. “Race-based persecution is real in many places — but so is religious, political, and gender-based violence. That’s exactly what Afghans are fleeing.”

Thula Simpson, an associate professor of history at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, said that Trump’s rhetoric and the admission of Afrikaner refugees in the U.S. has created tensions in South Africa.

“By using the term ‘genocide,’ Trump has gone beyond the reality here,” Simpson said. “It creates a very uncertain situation, very intense situation, with aggravated race relations in the country — and the outcome is unpredictable.”