A new group of white South African refugees has touched down in the United States, as part of a fast-tracked and controversial immigration initiative championed by the Trump administration.
According to the Solidarity Movement, a group representing Afrikaners, nine individuals, including families, arrived last week on a commercial flight to Atlanta. “Refugees continue to arrive in the United States from South Africa on commercial flights as part of the Afrikaner resettlement program’s ongoing operations,” a spokesperson for the U.S. Embassy confirmed via email to The Associated Press.
The recent arrivals mark the second cohort under the administration’s Afrikaner resettlement program, which was announced in February by President Donald Trump. The first group, consisting of 59 white South Africans, landed in Virginia last month aboard a chartered flight.
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The Trump administration’s policy, which positions white South Africans as victims of racial persecution, represents a dramatic departure from previous refugee priorities. While other resettlement programs were frozen indefinitely, this initiative was accelerated.
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The administration claims white South Africans are being persecuted by their Black-led government and are suffering from racially targeted violence. “Refugee status” is being granted on these grounds. However, the South African government has rejected these assertions, calling them misleading.
“Trump has falsely claimed that white South African farmers are targeted in widespread attacks that amount to genocide and are having their land taken away.” The issue came to a head during a meeting between Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House last month, where Trump reportedly confronted Ramaphosa with these allegations.
Ramaphosa, pushing back, said that violent crime is a national issue in South Africa that cuts across racial lines: “The relatively small number of attacks on white farmers are part of South Africa’s larger problems with violent crime, which affects all races.”
Initially framed as a program specific to Afrikaners, descendants of mainly Dutch and French colonial settlers, new U.S. Embassy guidelines have broadened eligibility criteria. Applicants must now belong to “a racial minority” in South Africa and demonstrate “a past experience of persecution or fear of future persecution.”
South Africa’s white population includes roughly 2.7 million Afrikaners out of about 4.5 million whites in total, within a nation of 62 million people, more than 80% of whom are Black.
While U.S. officials have not released figures on how many people are seeking relocation under this policy, Jaco Kleynhans of the Solidarity Movement estimated around 8,000 applications. Meanwhile, another group assisting applicants claims that “tens of thousands” of white South Africans are pursuing refugee status.
As of now, the U.S. continues to “review inquiries from individuals who have expressed interest to the embassy in resettling to the United States and is reaching out to eligible individuals for refugee interviews and processing,” the embassy said.
