The Trump administration said yesterday that it is raising this year’s cap on U.S. refugee admissions from 7,500 to 17,500, but only to admit more white South Africans.
In addition to suspending U.S. refugee admissions on his first day back in office last year, Trump has sought to end legal protections for immigrants from Afghanistan, Haiti and elsewhere, and last fall his administration slashed the refugee admissions cap for the new fiscal year to a record-low 7,500, compared with 125,000 a year during the Biden administration.
Admissions are primarily reserved for Afrikaners, a white ethnic minority group that controlled South Africa during apartheid and who the Trump administration says are now subject to persecution, a claim the South African government denies and experts say is based on misinformation.
In an announcement on the Federal Register, Trump said the cap was being raised due to “an unforeseen emergency refugee situation,” citing “recent increases in the incitement of racially motivated violence” by the South African government. He said the admission of Afrikaners was “justified by the grave humanitarian concerns and is otherwise in the national interest.”
Beth Oppenheim, president and CEO of the Jewish humanitarian group HIAS, said the Trump administration was “dismantling” almost 50 years of U.S. efforts to offer safety to the world’s most vulnerable refugees.
“While refugee families from Afghanistan, Sudan, Iran, Venezuela, Haiti and elsewhere have been abandoned after years of vetting and waiting, the administration is expanding refugee admissions almost exclusively to prioritize white South Africans,” she said. “That is not refugee protection. It is the politicization of a humanitarian program in service of an ideological agenda.”