Forty-nine white South Africans, granted refugee status by the Trump administration, left their homeland Sunday on a privately chartered flight to the United States.
The group, comprising families and young children, was expected to arrive at Dulles International Airport outside Washington D.C. on Monday morning, according to Collen Mbisi, a spokesperson for South Africa’s transport ministry. T
his marks the first relocation of Afrikaners – a white minority group in South Africa – since President Trump’s February 7 executive order.
The order accused South Africa’s Black-led government of racial discrimination against Afrikaners and established a program offering them relocation to America.
The South African government said it is “completely false” that Afrikaners are being persecuted.
The Trump administration has fast-tracked their applications while pausing other refugee programs, halting arrivals from Afghanistan, Iraq, most of sub-Saharan Africa and other countries in a move being challenged in court.
Refugee groups have questioned why the white South Africans are being prioritized ahead of people from countries wracked by war and natural disasters. Vetting for refugee status in the U.S. often takes years.
The Trump administration says the South African government is pursuing racist, anti-white policies through affirmative action laws and a new land expropriation law it says targets Afrikaners’ land. The government says those claims are based on misinformation and there is no racism against Afrikaners and no land has been expropriated, although the contentious law has been passed and is the focus of criticism in South Africa.
South Africa also denies U.S. claims that Afrikaners are being targeted in racially motivated attacks in some rural communities. Instead, the South African government said Afrikaners — who are the descendants of Dutch and French colonial settlers — are “amongst the most economically privileged” in the country.
The first Afrikaner refugees were traveling on a flight operated by the Tulsa, Oklahoma-based charter company Omni Air International, Mbisi said. They would fly to Dakar, Senegal and stop there to refuel before heading for Dulles.
They departed from OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg, where they were accompanied by police officers and airport officials when they checked in. Mbisi said they would have to be vetted by police to ensure there were no criminal cases or outstanding warrants against them before being allowed to leave.
The South African government said there was no justification for them being relocated but said it wouldn’t stop them and respected their freedom of choice.
They are expected to be greeted at Dulles by a U.S. government delegation, including the deputy secretary of state and officials from the Department of Health and Human Services, whose refugee office has organized their resettlement.
The flight will be the first in a “much larger-scale relocation effort,” White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told reporters on Friday. Miller said that what was happening to Afrikaners in South Africa “fits the textbook definition of why the refugee program was created.”
