Dozens of white South Africans departed their country for the United States on May 11 after being granted refugee status under the Trump administration’s new admission program.
About 49 Afrikaners—a white ethnic minority in South Africa—boarded a chartered flight bound for the District of Columbia, which will then fly to Texas, South African Transport Department spokesperson Collen Msibi said.
“One of the conditions of the permit was to ensure that they were vetted in case one of them has a criminal issue pending,” Msibi was quoted as saying by Reuters.
The Epoch Times has reached out to the State Department for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.
The nation’s government noted that special conditions must be met before expropriating land, including that it has had longtime informal occupants, is unused and owned purely for speculation, or was left abandoned.
In his executive order, Trump stated that Ramaphosa’s government has imposed countless policies “designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education, and business, and hateful rhetoric and government actions fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners.”
South Africa’s government has rejected the claims and called Washington’s move to resettle South Africans as refugees “entirely politically motivated.”
However, the South African government said that it will not block departures of citizens who seek to leave the country, provided they comply with domestic laws.
“What was happening in South Africa fits the textbook definition of why the refugee program was created,” Miller said. “This is persecution based on a protected characteristic. In this case, race.”
