Donald Trump increased the annual refugee ceiling in the United States from 7,500 to 17,500 in order to accommodate up to 10,000 additional white South Africans, according to a presidential decision published Tuesday, May 26, in the US Federal Register.
In 2025, the Republican administration announced that it would drastically reduce the maximum number of refugees welcomed in the United States to 7,500, compared to 125,000 the previous year, saying it wanted to favor the white minority in South Africa, in a context of tensions between Washington and Pretoria since Donald Trump’s return to power.
In fact, the 4,499 people admitted so far to the United States as refugees since the start of the fiscal year (started October 1) are all South Africans, with the exception of three Afghans, according to the table from the American State Department listing them until March 31.
The Trump government accuses, without foundation, the South African authorities of “persecution” of Afrikaners, descendants of the country’s European settlers, and criticizes them for their complaint before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for “genocide” against Israel for its war in the Gaza Strip.
Refugee status for Afrikaners
In a decision dated May 21 and published Tuesday, the American president invoked an “emergency situation”, caused according to him by “a recent increase in incitement to racially motivated violence” on the part of the government and important South African political parties.
As a result, he ordered that the ceiling of 7,500 refugees per year be increased by 10,000, specifying that “additional admissions must be granted to Afrikaners from South Africa”.
The Trump administration imposed 30% tariffs on South African products affected by its tariffs, the highest among sub-Saharan African countries, and boycotted the G20 summit in Johannesburg in November.
In 2025, Donald Trump issued a decree offering refugee status to Afrikaners before welcoming a first group of around fifty people, an initiative vigorously contested by Pretoria.
Afrikaners make up the majority of South Africa’s white population. It is from this segment of the population that the political leaders who established apartheid came, a system of racial segregation that deprived the black population – the vast majority – of most of their rights from 1948 until the early 1990s.
