US President Donald Trump has instituted the most dramatic retrenchment of the country’s refugee programme in decades, largely walling off the United States to anyone fleeing war and persecution.
Trump made one notable carve out: since last year, Afrikaners, the white minority from South Africa, have had the rare ability to seek refugee status.
He has now moved ahead with plans to allow 10,000 more white South Africans into the United States as refugees, even as the programme remains closed off to people from every other country in the world, according to documents obtained by The New York Times.
In a report submitted to Congress on May 17, Trump proposed lifting the record-low refugee admissions level of 7,500 to 17,500, reserving the additional openings for Afrikaners, who are primarily of Dutch descent.
The move would bring thousands of additional Afrikaners to the United States, on top of the roughly 6,000 who have entered the country this fiscal year, the vast majority among all refugees allowed entry.
Trump and his aides have claimed Afrikaners face racial persecution, an assertion strongly disputed by South African officials.
The administration argues that South Africa’s response to Trump’s claims of persecution, the rhetoric of political leaders and what it calls the disruption of the Afrikaner refugee programme constitute an emergency that requires resettling even more white minorities in the United States.
The use of the emergency determination would be a major step in the president’s effort to transform a programme that for decades amounted to a pathway for those fleeing war, famine and natural disaster around the globe and turn it essentially into a pipeline for mostly white people hoping to immigrate to the United States.
“There are so many countries with very legitimate claims for refugees – the doors are being slammed in all of their faces,” said Elizabeth Shackelford, a former diplomat who worked in Poland, South Sudan and Somalia before resigning in protest of Trump’s first presidency.
“The reason for the sympathy from this administration is because it sends a very clear message: ‘We will not tolerate white ethnic people being treated as if they are not special.’”
The White House referred requests for comment to the State Department.
A department official, who was not authorised to comment on the internal discussions, said the administration was prioritising Afrikaners who were escaping “government-sponsored, race-based discrimination”.
The expansion of the programme comes despite signs of discontent among some of the Afrikaners who have resettled in the United States.
A number of South Africans have complained about the slow pace of receiving benefits and support from a refugee system that has been gutted by Trump, according to a resettlement agency official.
A handful have even gone back to South Africa after struggling to get their relatives to join them in the United States, officials said – an experience common for many refugees who came before them.
Trump moved last year to upend the refugee programme to effectively prioritise white people.
He suspended refugee admissions for every country besides South Africa early in the year and in October lowered the ceiling of refugee admissions to just 7,500 for this fiscal year, down from the cap of 125,000 set by the Biden administration in 2024.
The limited number of slots were reserved for Afrikaners, as well as some other South African minorities.
At the same time, administration officials have discussed sending Afghan refugees who are seeking entry to the United States after assisting the US war effort in their country to Congo.
And the administration has been scrutinising some refugees who have resettled in the United States but have not yet applied for their green cards.
Trump’s changes have had a dramatic effect.
The United States let in just 6,069 refugees for the fiscal year through the end of April, closely approaching the annual cap, according to government data. Three were from Afghanistan; the rest were from South Africa.
In comparison, just over 100,000 refugees were admitted to the United States in fiscal year 2024.
Many of the refugees were welcomed to the United States in a matter of months, while applicants for the refugee programme have often waited years in camps around the world because of a backlog of cases and a lengthy security vetting process.
The administration’s policy has left other refugees in war-torn nations stranded and prompted Afghan allies to question whether their sacrifice for the US military will ever be repaid.
Besides Trump’s false claim that Afrikaners are being targeted in “a genocide”, the administration has also publicly attacked the South African government on issues such as government land seizures and laws meant to redress the legacy of apartheid.
The president has sought to punish South Africa with high tariffs, cutting aid to the country and deploying US refugee officers to the African nation to help the Afrikaners with resettlement.
Administration officials have pointed to a South African opposition party’s embrace of the chant “Kill the Boer!” as evidence of the targeting of the white minority.
The chant, which refers to Afrikaners, had its origins in Black South Africans’ fight against the country’s violent, racist government in the apartheid era.
The ruling party, the African National Congress, has distanced itself from the slogan.
When South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, met with Trump in the Oval Office last year, the American president surprised him with a video featuring the chant, as well as misleading images that he falsely claimed were evidence of a genocide against white South African farmers.
“This is exhausting,” Vincent Magwenya, a spokesperson for the South African president, said of the Trump administration’s argument that there is an emergency involving the persecution of Afrikaners.
“If US taxpayers are happy and satisfied with their tax dollars being spent on lies and falsehoods of the so-called ‘Afrikaner refugee’ programme, that’s not our business.” — ©2026 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times
