Weeks into his second term, President Donald Trump announced that nearly all refugees admitted to the United States would be White South Africans, radically reshaping a decades-long program that had largely serviced people fleeing war, persecution, or other dangers.
Eighteen months later, the US has admitted more than 7,700 Afrikaners — but the effort has hit some notable bumps along the way.
The refugee program, largely shuttered for the rest of the world, has sparked diplomatic spats, prompted a scramble to open a processing site in South Africa, generated highly unusual requests from applicants and produced high denial rates, due in part to criminal records among some applicants, according to more than a dozen people familiar with the program.
While the processing of refugees can be a difficult task, particularly in urgent situations, the people familiar with the program told CNN that the hurdles it has faced stem from the administration’s desire to bend the program to only benefit Afrikaners.
“It’s clear to us that the designation of one population over literally all others does not represent the actual humanitarian need,” said Beth Oppenheim, president & CEO of HIAS, a refugee assistance organization that is part of an ongoing lawsuit challenging the administration’s suspension of the refugee program.
“It doesn’t mean there aren’t White South Africans who deserve protection. Of course, there are. But when you say they’re the only one population that needs protection that doesn’t reflect the reality in our world,” Oppenheim said. She noted that the program has historically been reserved for some of the world’s most vulnerable populations who have already fled their home countries and are often living in refugee camps.
Trump’s move to narrow the US refugee program to only include Afrikaners stunned career officials in the early days of the administration, prompting discussions over who exactly would be eligible to enter the United States and whether they needed to be White or other minorities in South Africa would be eligible.
“They carved out this group out of nowhere,” one of the sources said. “That’s why the back and forth took place.”
Officials landed on a broad definition that doesn’t specify race and notes that to be eligible for consideration, individuals must be of South African nationality, must be of Afrikaner ethnicity or be a member of a racial minority in South Africa, among other requirements. The overwhelming majority of those who have come to the US are White South Africans.
Meanwhile, Homeland Security officials charged with training refugee officers before they interview people for potential resettlement in the US scrambled to find materials to substantiate the president’s claims that White South Africans faced persecution.
The administration wanted the resettlement to happen “so fast,” that if someone is approved, they should be able to get on a plane the next day, former US officials told CNN. One source said that administration officials made clear that staff “needed to pull out all stops to support the president’s priority of resettling this group of people.”
Another source familiar with the program told CNN: “They’re building the plane as they’re flying it.”
Some Afrikaners are arriving to the United States in a matter of weeks, while others are being denied over issues with criminal history, and denial rates are hovering in the teens, higher than the single-digit percentages that are typical for other refugee populations, sources told CNN.
“What you’d have is a case of an individual who suffered three or four incidents that involved criminality, sometimes even violent crime, but the question was — what indication was there that this was on account of a protected ground?” another source told CNN.
Others were approved to come to the US but sought to delay their departure from their home country for a variety of reasons, sources explained.
“Afrikaner families would try to renegotiate in terms of their departure dates, because they were selling land, they were making arrangements, they were waiting for kids to graduate,” a former US official said. “There were a lot of delays, and that is so abnormal.”
In a statement to CNN, US Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman Zach Kahler maintained that DHS is “committed to resettling Afrikaner refugees who are being persecuted by the South African government.”
“USCIS makes all decisions on U.S. Refugee Admissions Program applications on a case-by-case basis to ensure individuals are eligible for admission,” Kahler said.
Tensions and a charter flight
The program caused tensions on the ground late last year when the South African government briefly held, then released, two US government employees on assignment in South Africa. US officials have since moved their operations to a diplomatic site where temporary structures have also been stood up for processing, sources told CNN.
A State Department spokesperson told CNN, “This was not a mere diplomatic spat —the South African government raided the processing center and doxxed and harassed American officials in an attempt to delegitimize the plight of Afrikaners and intimidate those at the processing center.”
In a statement to CNN at the time, South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs said it had carried out an operation at a center processing refugee applications over suspected immigration violations concerning Kenyan nationals on site, noting that “the presence of foreign officials apparently coordinating with undocumented workers naturally raises serious questions about intent and diplomatic protocol.”
The Trump administration has highlighted its efforts to admit Afrikaners to the US, including at a welcome event at a DC-area airport last May for new arrivals with the US Deputy Secretary of State.
Sources said the government, at significant expense, paid to charter a plane to bring the inaugural group of Afrikaners to the US. Former officials said there was immense pressure to try to fill the charter flight, including discussions about potentially waiving medical exams to help do so. There were ultimately 59 people on board the flight.
“They didn’t get close to filling the plane,” one former official said. Another said that career officials raised concerns about using taxpayer money for that purpose. Another former official recalled thinking it “wasn’t fair” to the Afrikaners that they were being rushed to leave “just to get them there for a photo opp.”
“We would never have picked a date for people to arrive before we explicitly knew that they could leave,” the second former official recalled.
The State Department spokesperson noted that “every admitted refugee meets all requirements under U.S. law, including security and medical screenings.”
Another event was planned for this summer until being abruptly scrapped, according to a source.
The administration has also started distributing welcome bags to new arrivals that include materials aligned with Trump and his policies, the source said.
A former US government official told CNN that in prior administrations, refugees would typically get a so-called “cultural orientation” before arriving to the United States. That included preparing people for their first flight and a brief introduction to living in the US.
But last year, political appointees decided those existing materials could no longer be used, claiming they didn’t reflect Trump’s policy views, the official said.
Those who have already arrived in the US also face hurdles as they navigate life as a refugee with limited resources provided by the federal government, fueling pushback from some Afrikaners who came in with different expectations, sources say.
“The expectations set on the other side are unrealistic. They’re coming to a situation that is not as nice as they’re used to,” one source familiar with the resettlement process told CNN.
Unlike other refugee populations who arrive with very little, some White South Africans also have means, so they’re able to put children in private school or buy a car shortly after arrival.
Fringe claims and shifting standards
More than 3 million refugees have been admitted to the United States since the program was established in 1980. Applicants must prove that if they return to their home country, they’ll face persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or their political opinion. They are generally already outside of their country and unable or unwilling to return home over fear.
While there have been exceptions, processing refugees in their own country — as is happening in South Africa — is unusual, according to experts, because they are residing in the place where they’re claiming to be persecuted. Typically, situations are so urgent and dangerous that people are forced to flee their homes to another country.
For that reason, refugee advocates couldn’t recall a time that people applying for refuge in the United States were also willing to return to the country they were fleeing after being resettled — and that has occurred with some arrivals: They have come to the US, grown disillusioned, and decided to return to South Africa.
Trump has repeatedly amplified fringe claims that White farmers in South Africa are having their land seized and are being killed in massive numbers. He also confronted South Africa’s president with those claims in an Oval Office meeting last year. CNN has investigated the claims of White “genocide” in South Africa and found no evidence to back them up.
“President Trump has provided a lifeline for Afrikaners, who are being raped, maimed, killed, and driven off their property across South Africa. While the South African government and many in the media have brushed off the horrific lived experiences of this community, the Trump administration continues to process applications for refugee status because the President has a humanitarian heart,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement.
While presidential administrations must consult with Congress on refugee caps, the president has immense power in deciding who and how many people can come through utilizing that avenue.
“What’s different about this moment is not that Trump has put his particular spin on this program. That’s not unusual. What is unusual in this moment is the how and the why,” Oppenheim said.
In a recent move to up the number of Afrikaners allowed in the US, the Trump administration cited remarks from the South African president and an incident last year when the South African government questioned US personnel on assignment in the country.
“This escalating hostility heightens the risks to Afrikaners in South Africa, who are already subject to far-reaching government-sponsored race-based discrimination,” the report stated, justifying the need to revise the ceiling to 17,500. More Afrikaners are expected to arrive in the coming months as a result.
Experts who spoke with CNN stressed that there may be individual cases that fit the criteria for refugee status, but overwhelmingly, they said, Afrikaners’ cases are based on discrimination, which is short of what’s required by US and international law to qualify as a refugee.
“The most strident difference in the US refugee program is it was dominated by people who met the international definition of refugee, and none of these are,” a refugee advocate told CNN. “It’s changed the real purpose of that.”
