The Trump Administration Is Slashing the Number of Refugees Allowed Into the U.S.—and Giving White South Africans Priority

Far fewer refugees will be allowed into the U.S. in the coming year, and most of those who are admitted will be white South Africans who President Donald Trump has alleged face “unjust” racial discrimination in their country. The Trump Administration will limit refugee admissions to 7,500 during the 2026 fiscal year, it announced in a notice published in the Federal Register on Thursday, a dramatic decrease from the 125,000 figure set last year under President Joe Biden. Admissions will also “primarily be allocated among Afrikaners from South Africa,” the notice said, as well as other victims of “illegal or unjust discrimination in their respective homelands.” It pointed to an Executive Order the President issued in February, in which Trump condemned South Africa for what he described as “countless” policies restricting the opportunities of Afrikaners and fueling “disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners.” Afrikaners, who are descendants of primarily Dutch colonial settlers who arrived in South Africa in the 1600s, governed the country from 1948 to 1994 and imposed racial separation laws known as apartheid.  South African officials have strongly disputed the claims that Afrikaners are the victims of racial persecution.  “There are sufficient structures available within South Africa to address concerns of discrimination. Moreover, even if there are allegations of discrimination, it is our view that these do not meet the threshold of persecution required under domestic and international refugee law,” the South African Ministry of International Relations and Cooperation said in a statement earlier this year, contending that U.S. efforts to resettle South Africans as refugees appeared “entirely politically motivated and designed to question South Africa’s constitutional democracy.” The Trump Administration said in the notice that the significantly reduced number of overall refugee admissions is “justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest.”