Donald Trump’s administration will limit the number of refugees admitted to the United States to 7,500 next year and will give priority to white South Africans, according to a notice published by the White House cited by the Associated Press.
This is a large reduction compared to the numbers of recent years. With Joe Biden as president, 125,000 refugees entered North American soil.
According to the Associated Press, which had already warned of this scenario earlier this month, the warning says that the measure “is justified on humanitarian grounds” and in favor of the “national interest”. The statement says that vacancies will be “mainly” allocated to South Africans afrikaners (South African ethnic group with European descent) and “to other victims of illegal or unfair discrimination in their respective countries of origin”.
In May this year, Trump had criticized South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, accusing him of persecuting and killing the country’s white community, especially farmers. At that same moment, he showed a video which, he said, showed places where this community was now being killed and buried. It was later proven that those images were from 2020 and were about a protest in which the crosses represented farmers killed over the past few years, according to the BBC.
In the Oval Office in May, Trump criticized South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and claimed that white farmers in the country were being killed and “persecuted”.
The White House also showed a video that it said showed burial sites of murdered white farmers. Trump said he did not know where in South Africa the images were filmed.
The tense meeting came just days after the US granted asylum to 60 Afrikaners. The videos were later found to be footage from a 2020 protest in which the crosses represented farmers killed over several years.
In January 2025, on his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order suspending the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), arguing that this would allow him to prioritize national security and public safety.
Since then, only a residual number of refugees have entered the country, with a predominance of white South African citizens. Some others managed to be admitted following legal processes.