U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during an event to sign a memorandum in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 5, 2026.Image@ REUTERS/Evan Vucci
The United States is set to welcome white South African refugees to the White House on World Refugee Day next month, as President Donald Trump quietly signed a determination expanding the number of Afrikaners his administration can admit into the country.
A presidential determination dated May 21, reviewed by Reuters, shows Trump raised the refugee admissions ceiling by 10,000 for the current fiscal year — bringing the total cap to 17,500. The move comes after his administration had already admitted 6,000 white South Africans through the end of April, leaving little room under the original record-low ceiling of 7,500 set for fiscal year 2026, which ends September 30.
The document justifies the expansion by arguing that white South Africans of Afrikaner ethnicity face an emergency situation owing to what it describes as “incitement of racially motivated violence” by the South African government and political parties in the majority-Black country. No specific examples of such alleged government incitement were cited in the White House document.
South Africa has pushed back firmly. Government spokesperson Chrispin Phiri rejected the premise of the program outright. “The assertion that white Afrikaners, in particular, endure systemic persecution is entirely without foundation,” Phiri stated.
Trump also cited “new disruptions” of refugee operations in South Africa as adding urgency to the expansion. Those tensions came to a head late last year when South African authorities raided a Johannesburg building where U.S. staff and contractors were processing refugee cases. Diplomatic talks that followed produced an agreement allowing the programme to continue operating.
The Afrikaner refugee effort, launched weeks after Trump froze all refugee admissions upon taking office in January 2025, has drawn sharp criticism for its selective approach — prioritising white refugees while effectively shutting out thousands of applicants from Africa, Asia and elsewhere. Reflecting that disparity, the Trump administration has admitted only three non-South African refugees this entire fiscal year, according to government figures.
A State Department spokesperson declined to confirm the 10,000-person increase to the cap but said refugee levels would be determined by the president and that the programme remained a Trump priority.
The programme unfolds against the long shadow of apartheid, the system of racial segregation that governed South Africa until its first democratic elections in 1994, when separate schools, neighbourhoods and public facilities divided people along racial lines. Today, Black South Africans make up 81% of the population, while Afrikaners and other whites constitute around 7%, according to 2022 census data.
The planned White House appearance of Afrikaner refugees on June 20 — World Refugee Day — signals that Trump intends to keep the programme in the spotlight, even as it continues to strain relations with Pretoria and provoke debate over the integrity of international refugee protection norms.
By: Andrews Kwesi Yeboah