The first plane that transported the White South Africans who received the refugee status of the Trump administration landed at the Washington Dulles International Airport on Monday morning, according to a flight monitoring website.
The arrival marks a drastic reversal in refugee policies in the United States, which have long focused on helping people flee from war, famine and genocide. President Trump essentially stopped all refugee admission programs on his first day in office before creating a path for Afrikaners, a white ethnic minority that ruled the duration of apartheid in South Africa, to resettle itself in the United States.
The group that arrived on Monday on a Flight Charter Omni Air International financed by the United States has been discriminated against, has denied job opportunities and has been subject to violence due to his career. Forty -nine Afrikaners boarded the flight on Sunday, according to a spokesman for the Airport authority of South Africa, after more than 8,000 people expressed interest in the program. There are scan details available on people who arrived in the United States.
The South Africans who arrived in the United States on Monday had received accelerated processing by the Trump administration, waiting for no more than three months. Refugee resettlement before the first Trump Tok administration of an average of 18 to 24 months, in accordance with the American Immigration Council, an immigrants defense group.
Trump said Monday that the United States was extending citizens to these people, who said they were victims of a genocide.
“Farmers are being killed,” he told reporters. “It turns out that they are white. If they are white or black, it does not differentiate me. White farmers are being brutally killed and the earth is confiscated in South Africa.”
Police data do not support the narration of mass murder. From April 2020 to March 2024, 225 people were killed in farms in South Africa, according to the police. But most of the victims, 101, were current or previous workers who lived in farms, which are mostly black. Fifty -three of the victims were farmers, who are common white.
The refugee program has exacerbated tensions between the United States and South Africa, whose government has rejected the Trump administration statement that Afrikaners are eligible for refugee status.
“It is very unfortunate that it seems that the resettlement of South Africans to the United States under the appearance of being” refugees “is completely motivated by political and designed to question the constitutional democracy of South Africa, for the replacement of the fans of South Age, Afisman by the statement of Africa -aphicica -Affice -Afic.”
Stephen Miller, the White House Cabinet Deputy Director that has exaggerated the administration’s immigration policy, said the situation was created in South Africa “conforms to the defense program of the textbook of the textbook.”
“This is a persecution based on a protected feature in this case, the breed,” he said, “this is racing -based persecution.”
In February, Trump signed an executive order that suspended all foreign assistance to South Africa and announced his administration work to reassure the “Afrikaner refugees” because the actions of the South African government that “raciously disapproved of the landowners.”
Trump referred to a law, known as the Expropriation Law, which allows the Government in some cases to acquire private property lands in public interest without paying compensation. But that step can only be done after a justification process subject to judicial review.
Ronald Lamola, Minister of Foreign Affairs of South Africa, has compared the law with the eminent domain in the United States. Analysts say that the law has many controls and balances to prevent abuse. The most likely application, analysts say, will be to take land that is not in use.
The Trump administration has also criticized the South African government for its sentence to Israel for the war in Gaza and its close relationship with Iran. South Africa has presented a case of genocide against Israel in the International Court of Justice.
Hamed Aleaziz and AISHVARYA KAVI Contributed reports.
