‘Mission South Africa’: as Trump offers the status of white African refugees

Almost immediately after the entry into office, President Trump began to close the resettment programs of the refugees, cutting billions of dollars in funding and making everything, but impossible, for people from dozens of countries to look for a paradise in the United States.

With an exception.

The Trump administration has opened the doors to the white Afrikaners from South Africa, establishing a program called “South Africa Mission” to help them come to the United States as refugees, according to the documents obtained by the New York Times.

Based on phase one of the program, the United States distributed multiple teams to convert the spaces for commercial offices to Pretoria, the capital of South Africa, in ad hoc refugees centers, according to the documents. The teams are studying over 8,200 requests that express interest in resettment in the United States and have already identified 100 Afrikaner which could be approved for refugee status. Government officials were aimed at focusing in particular on the projection of Afrikaner white farmers.

The administration also provided security escorts to officials who lead the interviews of potential refugees.

In mid -April, the US officials on the ground in South Africa “will propose long -term solutions, to ensure the succession of the president’s vision for the dignified resettment of the AphrikaNer admissible candidates”, according to a memo sent by the Embassy to Pretoria to the Washington State Department this month.

The attention of the administration on white Afrikaners comes as it actually prohibits the entry of other refugees, including about 20,000 people from countries such as Afghanistan, Congo and Syria who have been approved before Trump came into office. In judicial documents on those other refugees, the administration claimed that the basic functions of the refugee program had been “interrupted” after the president’s ban, therefore he did not have the resources to be hired in several people.

“There is no subtext and nothing subtle in the way the immigration policy and refugees of this administration has evident racial and racist shades,” said Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the American voice. “While trying to identify Afrikaner for a special treatment, at the same time they want that we think mostly new black and brown arrivals who have checked new arrivals despite their background checks and all the contrary evidence.”

The program also inserts the United States in a debate accused within South Africa, in which some members of the White Afrikaner minority have started a campaign to suggest that they are the real victims in Post-Apartheid South Africa. Under Apartheid, a white minority government discriminated against color South Africans and brutality and violence flourished, leading to torture, disappearance and murder.

There have been murders of white farmers, at the center of the Afrikaner complaints, but the police statistics show that they are no longer vulnerable to the violent crime of others in the country. In South Africa, over 90 percent of the population comes from racial groups persecuted by the racist regime and apartheid.

In a declaration, the State Department said she was focused on the resetting of the Afrikaner that have been “victims of unjust racial discrimination”. The agency confirmed that it started to interview the candidates and said that they would have to pass “rigorous background and safety checks”.

The decision to unleash the resources for the Afrikaners who have just started the refugees process, while the requests of the Stonewalling court to elaborate those who flee from other countries that have already been eliminated for travel, risks to overturn an American refugee program that was the basis of the role of the United States for vulnerable, according to the offenant officials.

“The government clearly has the ability to elaborate questions when she wishes,” said Melissa Keaney, a senior supervision lawyer for the international refugee assistance project, the group that represents the complaints that try to restart the processing of refugees.

Trump has signed an executive order by suspending admissions to refugees his first day in office, claiming that welcoming refugees could compromise the resources for the Americans. He added that the future versions of the program should give priority to “only those refugees who can fully and appropriately assimilate in the United States”.

A federal judge of Seattle later temporarily blocked that executive order and commissioned the administration to restore the refugee program. But the Trump administration still cuts contracts with organizations that help those who apply for refugee status abroad, reducing the infrastructures necessary to support people looking for refuge in the United States.

Last week a Court of Appeal established that the administration must admit that thousands of people to whom refugee status was granted before Trump came into office, but he also refused to prevent the admission of new refugees.

The Department of Justice deflected for weeks the requests from the supporters of the refugees who accused the administration of evading the order of the court and delaying the process of almost all the refugees who had previously granted a ticket to come to the United States. The Trump administration claimed to have allowed a limited number of refugees that have been checked to enter the country, although the State Department has refused to provide a number.

The lawyers of the Department of Justice have argued that the Administration now lacks resources to help thousands of refugees and that in the restart of the program the government reserves the right to “do it in a way that reflects the priorities of the administration”.

Mr. Trump clarified which priorities were when he created an carved refugee for white Afrikaner. Mr. Trump at the time accused the South African government of confiscating the land of white Afrikanes, supporting a longtime conspiracy theory on the mistreatment of white South Africans in the post-apartheid era.

Trump referred to a recent policy signed by law by the South African government, known as the Exproportion Act. An abrogation on the era of apartheid and allows the government in some cases to acquire private land in the public interest, without paying compensation, only after a process of justification subject to judicial review.

Mr. Trump and his allies echoed to the afrikaners’ complaints. During his first term, Trump ordered the State Department to investigate with seizures of land and “the large -scale killing of farmers”. Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa but is not of Afrikaner origin, also has he said falsely That white farmers in South Africa were killed every day.

Despite the statements, the whites have half of the land of South Africa while constitute only 7 % of the population of the country. Police statistics do not show that they are more vulnerable to violent crime than other people in the nation.

Ernst Roets, former executive director of the Afrikaner Foundation, who puts pressure on the international support of Afrikanes’ interests, said that many of his peers felt seen by Mr. Trump.

But he said that the creation of the new refugee program has aroused debate among the Afrikanes. Many do not want to leave their home, said Roets, but they want the United States to support their efforts to claim “self -government” in South Africa.

“I don’t know anyone – no one are aware of – that he intends to move to America,” said Roets. “The people who want to come to America, we would support it. If people want to move to America, farmers or Afrikaner, we think they would make good American”.

“There is a good fit,” he added.

Zumbbe Baruti, a Congolese refugee who lives in the South Carolina, said he had spent decades in a refugee camp in Africa waiting for his turn to be accepted.

“To those white Africans are authorized to enter the United States, but black Africans are denied entry into the United States,” said Baruti, 29 years old, in Swahili. He said that the pivot far from refugees who have waited in the fields for years and to Afrikanes was a form of “discrimination”.

Mr. Baruti, a member of the people of Bembe in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, fled ethnic violence in the nation when he was a child. The refugee status was granted in 2023, but his wife and three children – the older 6 years and the youngest only 2 – had yet to free safety control. He entered the United States two years ago, concentrated on obtaining a job, savings and question immediately for his family to join him.

When he entered, he said he was told by the consultants who helped him with his question that his family would most likely join him in two years.

He said he seemed unlikely when Mr. Trump focused elsewhere.

“As for my family,” said Baruti, “hope has decreased”.