On his first day in office, Donald Trump signed an executive order suspending the U.S. refugee admissions program. A few days ago, he made an exception: 50 white South African Afrikaners were granted refugee status and welcomed to the United States, arriving in Washington on a charter flight paid for by U.S. taxpayers.
The Afrikaners constitute the majority of the country’s white population, but roughly four percent of the population itself. In 1948, government leaders—mostly Afrikaners—introduced apartheid: an institutionalized system of racial segregation and discrimination that granted privileges to the white minority at the expense of the Black majority, depriving them of civil, political, and social rights. In 1994, the Afrikaner government’s dominance ended, and Nelson Mandela was elected. Nowadays, Afrikaners—also referred to as Boers due to their historical ties to farming—own more than 70 percent of farmland and possess an average net worth 20 times higher than that of Black South Africans.
The Trump administration, however, has portrayed Afrikaners as victims of a genocide, a minority facing persecution due to “anti-white racism.” President Trump has declared the granting of refugee status to Afrikaners based on two major factors. The first one is the killing of white farmers. However, although these deaths have indeed occurred, they are part of broader criminal trends that affect the South African population regardless of ethnic group or socioeconomic level. The second factor regards South Africa’s Expropriation Act, enacted in 2024, aimed to allow land expropriation without compensation as a way to redress this historic injustice and redistribute land to Black South Africans. Nonetheless, such an act has not been implemented yet.
South African officials have rejected Trump’s narrative as “completely false.” South Africa’s Foreign Minister, Mr. Lamola, declared to the press that the Afrikaners who have arrived in the U.S. “will not be able to provide any evidence of persecution for the simple fact that whites are not persecuted in South Africa.” The government has repeatedly dismissed the idea of a genocide as “simply imagined.” Despite this, some far-right groups have used these isolated incidents of violent crimes to promote the unfounded narrative that white farmers are “exterminated” as a targeted group. This narrative is widely supported by Elon Musk, a close adviser of the U.S. President and a native of South Africa, who has contributed to amplifying the narrative of discrimination against whites in the country by publicly claiming the existence of a racial genocide in South Africa. In addition, Musk has criticized the country for its “racist ownership laws,” claiming that his satellite Internet service Starlink cannot operate in the country “just because I’m not Black.” In fact, to obtain the necessary licenses, Starlink would have to grant 30 percent ownership to historically disadvantaged groups, largely from the Black population excluded from the economy during apartheid.
Nonetheless, the decision to grant asylum to white South Africans by the Trump Administration is part of a broader framework to react against an alleged anti-American position from South Africa. In 2024, South Africa brought a case concerning the genocide committed by Israel in Palestine before the International Court of Justice. While the Biden administration had expressed disagreement with South Africa’s accusation, Trump went much further, issuing an executive order in February 2025 that imposed sanctions on South Africa and suspended all U.S. aid. Therefore, the accusation of the mass killing of Palestinians has been framed by the U.S. as evidence of support for Hamas and, as a consequence, as an aggressive position against the U.S. and its allies.
Thus, the Trump administration’s decision to exclusively accept white South African citizens into the federal asylum program highlights again the importance of pro-white racial policies to the M.A.G.A. movement. Afrikaners have been warmly welcomed into the U.S. as refugees, while other vulnerable groups, such as Afghans who have collaborated with the U.S. military, remain excluded. The only exception to the executive order suspending refugee admissions, a key move in Trump’s political agenda, has been made toward descendants of European settlers, Afrikaners, who were granted special consideration at the expense of many vulnerable groups who have been waiting in refugee camps and dangerous conditions for years.
