WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration said Tuesday that it will admit an additional 10,000 white South Africans into the U.S. as refugees this year, increasing its historically low annual cap but still blocking people from other countries from entering through the programme.
Trump suspended the refugee programme on his first day in office and, since then, has turned it into a vehicle to allow Afrikaners — a group of white South Africans descended mainly from Dutch settlers — into the U.S. Advocates say the decision to focus a decades-old programme on one group has left people around the world fleeing war and strife stranded and with few options.
The administration says Afrikaners are subject to persecution in their home country, a charge the government in South Africa denies.
In the announcement Tuesday on the Federal Register, President Donald Trump said that because of “an unforeseen emergency refugee situation” he was raising the refugee cap. He blamed the South African government for “recent increases in the incitement of racially motivated violence” but gave no specific information.
“I hereby determine that the admission to the United States of Afrikaners from South Africa in response to this emergency is justified by the grave humanitarian concerns and is otherwise in the national interest,” Trump said in the announcement.
The administration indicated last year that it would admit up to 7,500, mostly Afrikaners, during the fiscal year stretching from October 2025 through September 2026, but last week, in a notice to Congress informing it of the increase, the administration said that “unforeseen developments in South Africa created an emergency refugee situation.” The change raises the limit to 17,500.
Christopher Landau, the deputy secretary of state, and Troy Edgar, the deputy secretary of Homeland Security, met with key congressional committees on Thursday as part of the legally required consultation process with lawmakers, according to two people who were granted anonymity to discuss a private meeting.
During the hour-long session, Landau told lawmakers that one of the ways that Afrikaners had faced persecution at home was the erasure of their history in school textbooks, according to the people with knowledge of the meeting. The discussion infuriated Democrats, who called the approach and the consultation “indefensible.”
The State Department did not return a request for comment on the interaction.
“The administration’s shameful approach to refugee resettlement is organized around prioritizing white-only Afrikaners and betraying everyone else, including thousands of Afghan allies who risked their lives for our nation, and thousands of other approved and vetted refugees twisting in the wind,” said Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Alex Padilla of California, and Democratic Reps. Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Pramila Jayapal of Washington.
Inside the meeting, Democrats also pressed the administration on religious minorities in other nations, particularly in Iran, and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan indicated that it was an issue the administration should look at, the people said. Jordan raised the case of Saleh Mohammadi, a 19-year-old star wrestler who was hanged in Iran with two other young men in March after being sentenced on charges of “moharabeh,” or “waging war against God,” another person with knowledge of the meeting said.
