The Trump administration movement to prioritize the resettlement of White South African refugees in the United States, even when it has rejected refugees from countries, including Afghanistan and Haiti, has caused accusations of hypocrisy and a double standard, as well as questions about who is in the ticket of the new arrivals.
On Monday, the State Department said he had welcomed 59 Afrikaners whose requests to reach the United States were accelerated under the executive order of President Donald Trump issued in February entitled, “addressing atrocious actions of the Republic of South Africa.” The order asked the administration that “prioritize humanitarian relief, including admission and resettlement” for Afrikaners, a South African minority group descended mainly from Dutch settlers, “who are victims of unfair racial discrimination.”
The State Department of State for the State Department, Christopher Landau, the second of the highest -ranking United States, was present to greet the charter flight of the new arrivals, and the spokeswoman for the Tammy Bruce department pointed out in a statement that additional Afrikaners will soon continue in their steps.
“In the coming months, we will continue to welcome more Afrikaner refugees and help them rebuild their lives in our great country,” he said.
The newly arrived South Africans listen to the Secretary of State of the United States, Christopher Landau, and the Secretary of the Secretary of National Security Troy Edgar, to deliver welcome statements near the Washington Dulles International Airport, on May 12, 2025 in Dulles, Virginia.
Somodevilla/Getty chip
However, the State Department has dodged questions about how that trip is being financed.
Usually, when a refugee who resettle themselves in the US. Refugees also sign a promisery note that guarantees that they will pay the loan before leaving their country of origin.
But the International Migration Organization told ABC News that it did not participate in the loan administration for any of the 59 people who arrived at Washington Dulles International Airport this week, and the Trump administration has repeatedly refused to say if they paid their own way.
“The refugee migration and assistance account of the State Department finances a variety of programs and activities aimed at providing humanitarian assistance to refugees, displaced persons and other vulnerable populations,” said a state department official to ABC News when they were pressed on costs.
“This includes activities related to resettlement refugees in the United States, such as processing and its initial placement,” added the official.
Some of the first groups of White South Africans granted the refugee status that have flags of the United States while attending a meeting and greeting event, at the Dulles International Airport, in Dulles, Virginia, on May 12, 2025.
Saul Loeb/AFP through Getty Images
For decades, the State Department has defended its long policy to make refugees finance their own way to the United States, arguing that it guarantees that each person assumes the responsibility of their own success in a new country and that it helps establish the credit history.
Critics of Trump administration policy say it is not the only way in which South African refugees have received preferential treatment.
The same day, the 59 Afrikaners landed in the Washington area, DC, the Department of National Security, announced that the temporary protected state would end, or TPS, for Afghans that already in the United States, revoking deportation protections issued by the Biden administration in 2021 after the Taliban acquisition in Afghanistan.
“We have reviewed the conditions in Afghanistan with our inter -institutional partners, and do not meet the requirements for a TPS designation,” said National Security Secretary Kristi Noem. “Afghanistan has had an improved security situation, and its stabilizing economy no longer prevents them from returning to their country of origin.”
The Trump administration has also moved to terminate the designations of TPS for Haiti, Venezuela and Cameroon. In addition, refugee admissions from other countries have decreased dramatically, and financial support for resettlement agencies has also suffered drastic cuts.
Meanwhile, there are doubts about the seriousness of the security situation that led the president to accelerate the resettlement of Afrikaners.
Trump’s executive order directly mentioned a controversial Law on South African land seizure in early 2025 that allowed the country’s government to take land without offering the compensation of the owners where it is “fair and equitable and in public interest” to do so.
But so far, the South African government has said that no land has been seized under the law.
On Monday, Trump also talked about violent attacks against Afrikaners.
“It is a genocide that is happening,” said the president. “Farmers are being killed. They are white. But if they are white or black, it doesn’t differentiate me. But white farmers are being brutally killed, and their land is being confiscated in South Africa.”
The South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, speaks while attending a panel in the CEO forum of Africa in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, May 12, 2025.
Luc Gnago/Reuters
After the Apartheid era of South Africa, black and black landowners have been the objective of violent agricultural attacks. The South African government said that the main reason for attacks is robbery, but white nationalist groups and others have affirmed that they are racially motivated.
Trump has been a critic of the management of the situation of the South African government for years, and in 2018, he published that he requested that the then Secretary of the State Mike Pompeo “study closely the seizures of the land and the farms of South Africa and the expropriations and the large -scale murder of the farmers.”
Elon Musk, a native of South Africa and the president’s main advisor during his second term, has also expressed the difficult situation of South African landowners, amplifying the “White Genocide” statements.
The South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has denied any persecution.
“A refugee is someone who has to leave his country for fear of political persecution, religious persecution or economic persecution,” Ramaphosa said Monday. “They do not fit that invoice.”
Some groups in the US that often work with the government to resettle refugees have also backed away the prioritization of the Trump administration to Afrikaners, with at least one, the ministries of episcopal migration, saying that it will not play a role in resettlement.
“In the light of the firm commitment of our Church to justice and racial reconciliation and our historical ties with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, we cannot take this step,” said the president President Sean Rowe in a statement.
Armando Torres-García de ABC, Luke Barr and Ely Brown contributed to this report.
