State Department to charter plane bringing first white South Africans to U.S. as refugees

A group of white South Africans will be arriving in Washington, D.C., on Monday by way of a State Department-chartered plane to be resettled in the U.S. as refugees, a source familiar with their arrival told NBC News.

Their resettlement comes even though President Donald Trump suspended the State Department’s refugee admissions program through an executive order on the first day of his second term.

The group’s scheduled arrival as the first white South Africans to enter the U.S. as refugees was first reported by The New York Times on Friday.

Trump signed an order on Jan. 20 that said the U.S. “lacks the ability to absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees, into its communities in a manner that does not compromise the availability of resources for Americans, that protects their safety and security, and that ensures the appropriate assimilation of refugees.”

But after a public dispute with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa a few weeks later over his signing of a land seizure law, Trump issued a second executive order both eliminating aid for South Africa and granting an exception for “Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation.”Trump adviser Elon Musk, who was born and raised in South Africa, has described the country as having “racist ownership laws,” accusing its government of failing to stop what he has referred to as a “genocide” against white farmers.

The South African government expressed its concerns to the Trump administration regarding the refugee status granted to its citizens in a Friday phone call between South African Deputy Minister Alvin Botes and U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau.

According to a South African readout of the call, Botes disputed the Trump administration’s position that the white South Africans are refugees, adding that the “allegations of discrimination are unfounded.”

Under the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, a refugee is defined as someone with a “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.”

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding how the white South Africans fit into the convention’s definition, or why this group was given priority over requests from other groups fleeing persecution in countries like Sudan, the Republic of Congo or Myanmar.

Chrispin Phiri, a spokesperson for South Africa’s Ministry of International Relations and Cooperation, said in a statement Friday: “It is most regrettable that it appears that the resettlement of South Africans to the United States under the guise of being ‘refugees’ is entirely politically motivated and designed to question South Africa’s constitutional democracy; a country which has in fact suffered true persecution under Apartheid rule and has worked tirelessly to prevent such levels of discrimination from ever occurring again.”

On Friday, White House deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser Stephen Miller defended the resettling of the Afrikaners even as refugees from other countries were barred from the U.S.

“What’s happening in South Africa fits the textbook definition of why the refugee program was created,” Miller said. “This is race-based persecution. The refugee program is not intended as a solution for global poverty, and historically, it has been used that way.”

Shawn VanDiver, the president of AfghanEvac, a San Diego-based coalition that helps Afghans evacuate and resettle in the U.S., said the Trump administration does not get to “cherry-pick which victims deserve safety.”

“If Stephen Miller suddenly supports refugee resettlement when it suits a political narrative, fine — but let’s not pretend Afghan allies don’t meet the same legal definition,” VanDiver told NBC News. “Race-based persecution is real in many places — but so is religious, political, and gender-based violence. That’s exactly what Afghans are fleeing.”