U.S. President Donald Trump granted refugee status to white South Africans and mobilized charter flights funded by the United States to bring them in.
The U.S. State Department officially announced on the 9th (local time) that it had granted asylum to 59 white Afrikaners (descendants of Dutch white immigrants).
Of these, 49 boarded a charter flight to Washington, D.C., at Johannesburg International Airport in South Africa on the 11th.
According to Reuters, most passengers underwent exit screening with their luggage meticulously wrapped in theft-prevention cellophane.
The Guardian reported that the Trump administration determined these white Afrikaners faced violence and threats of murder due to land reform policies in South Africa. The U.S. government also accepted claims from white Africans that they are being deprived of jobs because of their race.
Fox News reported that "President Trump made this decision quickly after receiving an internal report detailing the persecution of whites in South Africa."
This decision stands in stark contrast to policies regarding other asylum seekers. The Trump administration is applying stricter regulations than ever to illegal immigrants from Latin America. The New York Times (NYT) reported that applications from refugees fleeing famine and war in African conflict zones such as Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo are mostly rejected or in prolonged limbo.
According to the latest report from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the total number of refugees accepted by the United States last year plummeted by 70% compared to the previous year. The approval rate for refugees from Africa recorded the lowest ever at less than 5%.
The Washington Post (WP) assessed that "supporting charter flights exclusively for certain races is an extremely rare measure" in the situation where the Trump administration has effectively halted all refugee admissions.
There have been very few cases in American history of granting refugee status to specific white groups. The only instances were accepting residents fleeing the Soviet Union or communist regimes in Eastern Europe during the Cold War. It is noted that all cases differ in nature from this one.
The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) stated, "Presidential executive orders can influence refugee screening criteria," but also noted that "there is hardly any precedent for explicitly recognizing refugees as was done in this case for specific groups of white people from certain countries."
The South African government flatly rejected the Trump administration's claims, stating, "There is no organized persecution of whites."
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said in an official statement that "some exaggerated claims are being exploited by certain political forces in the United States" and emphasized that the controversial land reform is a legitimate process to rectify inequalities from the past apartheid era.
Reuters assessed that "while high crime rates in South Africa are a fact, the claim that this constitutes organized violence targeting only a specific race is not statistically supported."