US Refugee Admissions Dominated by South Africans Under New Trump Policy
Dramatic Shift in US Refugee Programme
The landscape of US refugee admissions has undergone a dramatic transformation under President Donald Trump's revised policies. Data from the Refugee Processing Center reveals that since October 2025, a striking 4,499 refugees have been resettled in the US. Of this total, all but three individuals, who originated from Afghanistan, were South African nationals.
This figure starkly contrasts with the Biden administration's last full fiscal year (beginning October 2023), during which 125,000 people from 85 countries were granted asylum.
Prioritising Afrikaner Refugees
Last year, President Trump controversially halted all refugee admissions, including those from conflict zones, while simultaneously permitting Afrikaners – a white minority group he described as persecuted – to seek resettlement. This characterisation has been firmly rejected by the South African government.
Trump asserted that these changes would bolster national security and public safety, specifying that priority would be extended to "Afrikaner South Africans and other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination in their respective homelands."
Rising Diplomatic Tensions
The policy alteration has exacerbated diplomatic friction between Washington and Pretoria. Tensions intensified over a year ago with the expulsion of South Africa's US ambassador, Ebrahim Rasool, after he accused Trump of "mobilising a supremacism." More recently, in May, President Trump confronted South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office, alleging a "genocide" against white farmers in South Africa. Ramaphosa, supported by John Steenhuisen, the white leader of the Democratic Alliance, refuted these claims.
In October, the South African government publicly criticised the US decision to prioritise white Afrikaner refugee applications, asserting that claims of a white genocide have been widely discredited and lack credible evidence. Prominent Afrikaner community members, including academics and businesspeople, have also rejected the narrative, with some signatories labelling the relocation scheme as racist.
The first group of 68 South African refugees arrived in the US in May last year, with numbers accelerating significantly in February and March of this year, seeing 2,848 arrivals. The highest concentration of these resettled individuals, 543, are now living in Texas.
