Trump admin. proposes admitting thousands more Afrikaners to U.S. as refugees
The Trump administration is redoubling efforts to resettle South African whites in the United States as refugees and is proposing to increase the government’s refugee cap to accept thousands more, according to a State Department plan sent to Congress and obtained by CBS News.
The administration effectively shut down the U.S. refugee program for most nationalities except the Afrikaners in South Africa, arguing that they were victims of racial oppression because they were white. The South African government has denied persecuting the ethnic minority, who are mostly descendants of European settlers from the Netherlands.
Now the State Department says there is a “refugee emergency” that requires more Afrikaners to be admitted before the end of the financial year. The ministry told Congress it wanted to increase the refugee cap from 7,500 to 17,500 and offer 10,000 additional places to Afrikaners.
The State Department proposal stated that admitting an additional 10,000 Afrikaners would cost approximately $100 million.
In this plan, the ministry argued that Afrikaners were facing “increasing hostility”, including critical statements by politicians and a number of officials. December raid by South African authorities at a refugee processing center in the United States. At that time, South African authorities announced that they arrested Kenyans working illegally in the center, but the USA condemned the raid.
The US resettled 6,069 refugees between October 2025 and the end of last month; officials used most of the record-low 7,500 spots allocated by President Trump last year. State Department figures show 6,066 (99%) of the refugees came from South Africa, while the other three came from Afghanistan.
Mr Trump alleged He said Afrikaners were facing a “genocide” and confronted South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at a tense Oval Office meeting last year with a video highlighting the country’s farmer killings.
These claims are highly controversial. “60 Minutes” earlier this year spoke to Afrikaners WHO rejected the idea Whites face a “genocide” and see the killings on farms as part of a broader crime problem that harms members of all races in South Africa.
Mr Trump also pointed to a controversial South African law that could allow the government to: seizing land in some cases when it is considered to be in the public interest. The law does not mention the race of the affected landowners, but white South Africans own a disproportionate share of the country’s land, a remnant of the apartheid system.
The State Department plan shared with Congress on Monday is a proposal that must be formally approved by the president before it can go into effect. But historically, the consultation with Congress required by federal law was a formality.
“President Trump has been very clear that we are prioritizing the resettlement in South Africa of Africans fleeing government-sponsored race-based discrimination,” a State Department spokesperson told CBS News, adding that “the decision on refugee admissions rests with the President.”
