EDITORIAL: Trump’s 2025 Refugee Reversal: White South African Farmers Fast-Tracked But At What Cost?

A critical look at Trump's 2025 executive order resettling white Afrikaner farmers, exposing racial bias and policy inconsistencies under a humanitarian guise

Natalie C. Frank, Ph.D May 22, 2025

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In February 2025, President Donald Trump stunned the world by issuing an executive order that suspended nearly all U.S. foreign aid to South Africa while simultaneously declaring a fast‑tracked refugee program to allow White South African farmers, mostly Afrikaners, to immigrate to the U.S. He intended to grant them American citizenship. Trump’s administration justified this by claiming they faced “government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation."

That same month, South African advocates delivered scathing criticism regarding the proposal. Their government insisted the order was based on misinformation (fake news), overlooked apartheid’s long-term legacy, and misrepresented the reality that existed in the country.

A Selective Humanitarian Crisis

By May 2025, the first group of 59 Afrikaners had landed at Dulles International Airport in Virginia, welcomed by Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and offered expedited refugee status and resettlement aid. At the same time doors were closed to thousands of others fleeing conflict zones or natural disasters around the world, while Trump continued to spout rhetoric about mass deportations of migrants that had been encouraged to come the U.S. in just the past few years.

A second wave of nine arrivals was confirmed in June, and embassy reports indicated thousands more inquiries from Afrikaners eager to move to the U.S. 

While Trump and allies such as South African-born Elon Musk have used South Africa’s Expropriation Act of 2024 as evidence of state-backed persecution, credible sources dispute claims of genocide or a policy allowing for broad land seizure. In fact, land reform efforts generally rely on market-based, seller-controlled policies as opposed to resulting in large-scale confiscation. Experts argue that farm attacks in South Africa are violent and tragic, but affect all races equally and are not part of a government-led campaign targeting whites.

So, based on the information obtained from credible sources, it appears that Trump is basing his argument on just a part of the situation in representing what is actually going on in South Africa in an effort to make his proposal look plausible and gain support from the American people.

Hypocrisy at the Heart of Policy

This policy runs directly into Trump's broader immigration record including refugee ceilings slashed from over 100,000 to just 15,000, family separations at the border, discriminatory travel bans, and punitive treatment of refugees from predominantly non-white countries. Trump’s suspension of virtually all refugee programs, only to carve out an exception for white Afrikaners, who were not even requesting asylum, reveals a clear double standard.

South Africans themselves, from civil society to political leaders, have widely criticized the move. Many consider the narrative of white persecution outdated, inflated, or outright dangerous. The Episcopal Church in the U.S., for example, ended its partnership with the federal refugee resettlement system in protest, calling the policy a moral failure.

The Politics of Symbolism

Trump’s Oval Office confrontation with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa underscored the symbolic weight of the policy. He dimmed the room’s lights, played video clips of incendiary comments, and insisted that land seizures were underway, even though such claims were unsubstantiated. As part of the footage, Trump showed a clip of an endless expanse of white crosses, saying they were grave markers for over 1000 white Afrikaner farmers. In truth, all of them were part of a protest over the murder of white farming couple Glen and Vida Rafferty, ambushed and shot to death on their land in 2020. The footage was widely viewed on YouTube on September 6, 2024, the day after the protest. The crosses have since been taken down.

In reality, although Trump claims there is an ongoing genocide of white farmers occurring in South Africa, the facts don't bear this out. According to South African Police Service (SAPS) figures, there were 26,232 murders in the country in 2024, with 44 being people within the farming community. Of those only eight were farmers and it is unknown what race each of these were.

Trump also showed the South African President pictures supposedly showing the murder of white South African farmers. One picture he focused on turned out to be the killing of a woman in the Democratic Republic of Congo. BBC verified the location and victim.

Although the South African president vehemently contradicted Trump's claims and shot down his evidence, Trump refused to listen and simply countered with the assertion that he had thousands of stories of such murders occurring.

Trump paid no heed to anything the South African president said and the operation, called Mission South Africa, was rolled out at breakneck speed. Entry pathways and capacity were announced: up to 1,000 Afrikaners could be admitted in 2025 under the scheme; within weeks thousands had reached out to the U.S. Embassy; and the first groups had already settled in states like Texas, New York, Iowa, and North Carolina.

It is amazing that Trump will ambush other world leaders and insist he knows more about their country than they do, presenting fake evidence that is publicly discredited but which he still uses in defense of his policy. Trump's aggressive presentation cast the Afrikaner issue as a cause for celebration for global white grievance politics.

There is no doubt that some people will take advantage of Trump's offer of U.S. citizenship. However, given that only 8 farmers were killed over the last year with no information as to how many if any were white, it is doubtful that those taking advantage of the Trump's new South African immigration policy will be running for their lives.

Why Facts Matter in a Refugee Debate

Under international refugee law, persecution must be by state actors or occur in the absence of protection. It is inconsistent with that legal standard to classify Afrikaners, who remain among South Africa’s most privileged by land ownership, education and income, as refugees fleeing systematic state oppression.

Critics argue this policy is less about safeguarding rights and more about signaling ideological affinity with white nationalist tropes: echoing false claims of “white genocide,” cherry-picking grievances, and ignoring the broader context of historical inequality and enduring disenfranchisement of Black South Africans.

Forging an Honest Refugee Policy

America's commitment to refugees and asylum seekers must be rooted in fairness, consistency, and evidence, not politics. If U.S. policy privileges one white minority over global victims of terror, war, genocide, or climate crisis, it forfeits moral legitimacy.

The Afrikaner admissions under Trump’s 2025 policy are emblematic of selective preference possibly selective racial preference. For genuine humanitarian leadership, the focus should be on those most vulnerable, not just politically convenient to support a personal belief.