CNN
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A flight carrying a group of 59 White South Africans granted refugee status by the Trump administration arrived in the United States on Monday.
They were the first people to be granted refugee status by the Trump administration and are not expected to be the last Afrikaners to come to the US. The South Africans, including children, were greeted upon their arrival at Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia by US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and Department of Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Troy Edgar.
The Trump administration has moved to not only admit but to expedite the processing of Afrikaners as refugees for alleged discrimination. At the same time, it has suspended all other refugee resettlement, including for people fleeing war and famine.
The policy of exempting only White South Africans from the indefinite pause has drawn criticism from the South African government and from refugee advocates.
Landau told the new arrivals that the US was “excited” to have them, adding, “We respect what you had to deal with these last few years.” He noted that many of them are farmers and likened them to “quality seeds” that would hopefully “bloom” in the US.
“We underscored for them that the American people are a welcoming and generous people, and we underscored the importance of assimilation into the United States, which is one of the very important factors that we look to in refugee admissions,” Landau told reporters after greeting the group.
Landau claimed the Afrikaners had been “subject to very serious, egregious and targeted threats” and accused the South African government of failing to act.
“The South African government has not done what we feel is appropriate to guarantee the rights of these citizens to live in peace with their fellow South Africans, which is why, under our domestic law, they were given refugee status,” Landau said.
Earlier on Monday, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said that those going to the US “do not fit the definition of a refugee.”
Ramaphosa said he told Donald Trump that what the US president had been told about the persecution of the White minority group was not true.
“Those people who have fled are not being persecuted, they are not being hounded, they are not being treated badly,” he said at a panel at the Africa CEO Forum in Cote d’Ivoire moderated by CNN’s Larry Madowo.
“They are leaving ostensibly because they don’t want to embrace the changes that are taking place in our country in accordance with our constitution,” Ramaphosa said.
Asked about Ramaphosa’s comments, Landau said, “It is not surprising, unfortunately, that a country from which refugees come does not concede that they are refugees.”
Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International, called the policy “a racialized immigration program masquerading as refugee resettlement, while real refugees remain stranded.”
“The main problem is denying protection to any other refugees from anywhere else in the world,” he said. “There are millions of refugees around the world – people who have had to flee their home countries due to war or persecution – who have far more need for protection than anyone in this group – none of whom, to my knowledge, had been forced to flee from South Africa.”
In remarks on Friday, senior White House official Stephen Miller said the arrivals this week are “the beginning of what’s going to be a much larger-scale relocation effort.”
Since Trump began his second term, the US has taken a series of punitive measures against South Africa, whose government has been met with ire not only from Trump, but also from his ally Elon Musk, who was born and raised in the country.
Both Trump and Musk, the tech billionaire, have alleged that White farmers in the country are being discriminated against under land reform policies that South Africa’s government says are necessary to remedy the legacy of apartheid.
In January, South Africa enacted the Expropriation Act, seeking to undo the legacy of apartheid, which created huge disparities in land ownership among its majority Black and minority White population.
Under apartheid, non-White South Africans were forcibly dispossessed from their lands for the benefit of Whites. Today, some three decades after racial segregation officially ended in the country, Black South Africans, who comprise over 80% of the population of 63 million, own around 4% of private land.
The expropriation law empowers South Africa’s government to take land and redistribute it – with no obligation to pay compensation in some instances – if the seizure is found to be “just and equitable and in the public interest.”
In February, Trump suspended aid to South Africa, alleging discrimination against White farmers. In that same executive order, the president said the US would “promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation.”
Earlier this month, Trump said in a post on social media that “any Farmer (with family!) from South Africa, seeking to flee that country for reasons of safety, will be invited into the United States of America with a rapid pathway to Citizenship.”
This story has been updated with additional developments.
CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez, Larry Madowo and Nimi Princewell contributed to this report.
