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(CNN) – A flight carrying a group of 59 white South Africans granted refugee status in the United States by the Trump administration arrived at Washington Dulles Airport in Virginia on Monday, a State Department official confirmed.
US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and Department of Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Troy Edgar welcomed the group at the airport.
Landau told the new arrivals, “We respect what you had to deal with these last few years.” He noted that many of them are farmers, adding that they would hopefully “bloom” in the US.
The Trump administration has not only moved to admit but to expedite the processing of Afrikaners as refugees for alleged discrimination. At the same time, it has suspended virtually all other refugee resettlement, including for people fleeing war and famine. The policy has drawn criticism from the South African government and refugee advocates.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa stated on Monday that those heading to the US “do not fit the definition of a refugee”.
Ramaphosa said he had told Donald Trump that the claims about the persecution of the white minority group were untrue.
“Those people who have fled are not being persecuted, they are not being hounded, they are not being treated badly,” he said during a panel at the Africa CEO Forum in Côte d’Ivoire, moderated by CNN’s Larry Madowo.
“They are leaving ostensibly because they do not want to embrace the changes taking place in our country in accordance with our constitution,” Ramaphosa added.
Jeremy Konyndyk, President of Refugees International, called the policy “a racialised immigration programme masquerading as refugee resettlement, while real refugees remain stranded”.
“The main problem is denying protection to any other refugees from anywhere else in the world,” he said. “There are millions of refugees around the world – people who have had to flee their home countries due to war or persecution – who have far more need for protection than anyone in this group, none of whom, to my knowledge, had been forced to flee South Africa.”
In remarks on Friday, senior White House official Stephen Miller said the arrivals this week are “the beginning of what’s going to be a much larger-scale relocation effort”.
Since Trump began his second term, the US has taken a series of punitive measures against South Africa, whose government has faced criticism not only from Trump but also from his ally Elon Musk, who was born and raised in the country.
Both Trump and Musk have alleged that white farmers in the country are being discriminated against under land reform policies that the South African government says are necessary to remedy the legacy of apartheid.
In January, South Africa enacted the Expropriation Act, aimed at undoing the legacy of apartheid, which created massive disparities in land ownership between the majority Black and minority white populations.
Under apartheid, non-white South Africans were forcibly dispossessed of land for the benefit of whites. Today, some three decades after the official end of racial segregation, Black South Africans, who make up over 80% of the country’s 63 million people, own around 4% of private land.
The expropriation law empowers the South African government to seize land and redistribute it – with no obligation to pay compensation in some instances – if the seizure is deemed “just and equitable and in the public interest”.
In February, Trump suspended aid to South Africa, citing alleged discrimination against white farmers. In the same executive order, the president stated that the US would “promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation”.
Earlier this month, Trump said on social media that “any Farmer (with family!) from South Africa, seeking to flee that country for reasons of safety, will be invited into the United States of America with a rapid pathway to Citizenship”.
