Two families of white South Africans whom President Donald Trump has designated as refugees arrived in the United States on Monday, en route to their new homes in southern Idaho.
The nine soon-to-be Idahoans are part of a group of about 50 Afrikaners, an ethnic group descended from European settlers, who landed at a Virginia airport to start new lives in the United States through a humanitarian program the Trump administration has suspended for most other people. The Idaho Office for Refugees, a private organization that coordinates resettlement in the state, confirmed that the families will settle in Twin Falls with the help of the nonprofit U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, or USCRI.
“USCRI has provided services to refugees and immigrants for over 100 years, and we’ll continue to do our part regardless of country of origin,” Eskinder Negash, the nonprofit’s president and CEO, said in a statement. “We are hopeful that the arrival of this group of refugees indicates the government’s intention to restart the U.S. refugee program and help other refugees in need of resettlement services.”
Holly Beech, communications manager at the Idaho Office for Refugees, said on Monday that “by and large,” the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program is still suspended, leaving people who have already been vetted and approved to reunite with their relatives in Idaho and other states unable to enter the country.
“The suspension has been devastating for our Idaho communities and for people overseas that have waited years to resettle, and had that approval and had that assurance, and are now in limbo,” Beech said by phone.
Trump suspended refugee admissions by executive order on his first day in office, citing “public safety” and saying that his administration would “admit only those refugees who can fully and appropriately assimilate into the United States.” In welcome remarks at Dulles International Airport on Monday, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau referred to those criteria and, noting that many of the Afrikaners are farmers by trade, likened them to “quality seeds” that will thrive “in foreign soil.”
In another executive order on Feb. 7, Trump decried “egregious” racial discrimination by the South African government against Afrikaners, an ethnic minority that ruled the country until the 1990s under the apartheid regime. The U.S. president pointed to a 2024 law that allows the South African government to redistribute land, which is still disproportionately owned by white South Africans more than 30 years after the end of apartheid.
“I want you all to know that you are really welcome here and that we respect what you have had to deal with these last few years,” Landau told the Afrikaners. “We respect the long tradition of your people and what you have accomplished over the years. And I am sure that you will be successful.”
No land has yet been seized under the controversial law, which is being challenged in court by the second-largest party in the country’s unity government. Speaking at the White House on Monday, Trump said he decided to designate the Afrikaners as refugees “because they’re being killed.”
“It’s a genocide that’s taking place that you people don’t want to write about,” Trump told reporters. “Farmers are being killed. They happen to be white, but whether they’re white or Black makes no difference to me. But white farmers are being brutally killed and their land is being confiscated in South Africa.”
In February, a group of more than 150 white South African Christian religious leaders signed a letterdenouncing Trump’s executive order and rejecting his claim.
“The narrative presented by the U.S. government is founded on fabrications, distortions, and outright lies,” the leaders wrote. “It does not reflect the reality of our country and, if anything, serves to heighten existing tensions in South Africa. It also detracts from the important work of building safer, healthier communities and addressing the complex history of land dispossession by white Europeans from the black African majority.”
In a statement issued Friday, South Africa’s Ministry of International Relations and Cooperation called the Trump administration’s allegations of discrimination “unfounded.”
“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,” the agency said, while adding that the Afrikaners were free to leave the country.
Black and white farmers alike have been subject to frequent attacks in South Africa, which has among the world’s highest rates of murder and other violent crime. Because the roughly 7% of South Africans who are white disproportionately work as farmers, often in remote locations not easily accessed by police, the attacks have fueled claims of “white genocide.”
Despite Trump’s professed indifference to the race of the farmers, only one racial group was represented among the first wave of refugees his administration said it would admit by repurposing the Preferred Communities program. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, that program is intended for refugees “with challenging needs that require special attention, including those with serious medical conditions, women at risk, and elderly refugees.”
While Trump and his allies in Congress have criticized the criteria for admitting refugees and asylum seekers under current U.S. law as overly broad, the application lets South Africans request refugee status due to either “past persecution” or merely “fear of future harm based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.”
Rep. Michael Baumgartner, a Republican from Spokane who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he supports Trump’s effort to welcome the Afrikaners to the United States but sees a broader logic to the move.
“My understanding is that the administration is seeking to give these folks refugee status both, probably, as just a basic human-rights issue but also as leverage in diplomatic negotiations with the South African government,” Baumgartner said by phone. “We would like them and other African countries to be aligned with us on any number of issues.”
Trump alluded to some of those issues in his Feb. 7 executive order, accusing South Africa of taking “aggressive positions towards the United States and its allies,” such as accusing Israel in the International Criminal Court of committing genocide during the ongoing war in Gaza.
Baumgartner said he wants to see refugee resettlement resume, especially for people from Afghanistan and Ukraine who, he said, “fit the traditional, accurate definition of refugees.” He said the Afrikaners also fit that definition.
“They are attacked by their government because of their race and their culture,” he said. “And they don’t have a lot of great options on where to go.”
Baumgartner recalled that when he worked as a State Department contractor in Afghanistan, a U.S. Agency for International Development program to educate Afghan farmers was run by displaced white farmers from Zimbabwe, where the government seized land starting in 2000 in a project for which the Zimbabwean government began compensating those farmers earlier this year.
Democrats have accused Trump of applying a double standard by welcoming white South Africans while barring refugees from the rest of the world. In a statement, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement that “the decision by this administration to put one group at the front of the line is clearly politically motivated and an effort to rewrite history.”
Chandra Upreti, director of the USCRI field office in Twin Falls, said by phone that the Afrikaners should begin arriving in the southern Idaho city sometime this week, although he didn’t know exactly when.
“Twin Falls is a welcoming community, and we have opened our doors and our hearts to people from all over the world for the last 45 years,” Upreti said. “My wife and I both grew up in a refugee camp with no country to call our own, until we resettled in Twin Falls, and today we proudly call this community our home. We own a business, and are incredibly thankful for the support we have received upon our arrival. As the director of the refugee center, I’m dedicated to offer the same warm welcome my family was fortunate to receive 17 years ago, and we remain committed to providing services to our newcomers, just like any other refugees that have resettled.”
He said the newly arrived South Africans will receive the same services as other refugees. In the last fiscal year, he said, 242 refugees were resettled in Twin Falls, which Upreti said has both the capacity and community support to welcome people from around the world.
“The widespread coverage of this news has sparked hope among some of the refugees from various backgrounds who are awaiting resettlement, and it reinforces our belief in the importance of continuing refugee resettlement efforts for those seeking safety in the first place,” Upreti said. “It’s our hope that we continue to do great work and continue to bring in folks from different parts of the world.”
Speaking at Dulles Airport, Landau said the resettlement of the Afrikaners sends “a clear message that the United States really rejects the egregious persecution of people on the basis of race in South Africa, and we welcome these people to the United States and to a new future.”
“Whether or not the broader refugee programs for other people around the world will be lifted,” he added, “is still an ongoing consideration.”
Monica Carrillo-Casas is a Murrow News fellow for Spokane Public Radio and The Spokesman-Review. All stories produced by Murrow Local News fellows can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. Image rights may vary.
Orion Donovan Smith's work is funded in part by members of the Spokane community via the Community Journalism and Civic Engagement Fund. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact the Spokesman-Review's managing editor.
