President Trump welcomes first white South African refugees to US
After suspending the U.S. refugee program, President Trump made an exception for white South Africans known as Afrikaners.
The Trump administration may order the review of all refugees who were already admitted to the United States during the Biden administration and require them to be reinterviewed, according to a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services memo obtained by USA TODAY.
According to the November 21 memo, all refugees who entered the country between January 20, 2021, the day before former President Joe Biden took office, and February 20, 2025, will have their applications reexamined, even if they have already been admitted to the United States. The memo states that refugees who entered the country outside of that period may also be re-examined.
Refugees who have already been admitted may also need to be interviewed again to prove they face “past persecution or well-founded fear,” according to the memo. Refugees whose applications are rejected have no means of appealing the decision, it says.
About 197,000 refugees were admitted to the United States from 2021 to 2024, according to the Migration Policy Institute, up from 118,000 in Trump’s first term but still fewer than under any other president in the past half century.
Shortly after taking office for the second time, President Trump suspended the refugee program indefinitely. The administration is capping the number of refugees allowed into the United States at just 7,500, most of them white South Africans, according to a notice published in the Federal Register in late October.
Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, said the Biden administration has “accelerated the admission of refugees from terrorism- and gang-prone countries, prioritizing absolute numbers over rigorous screening and strict adherence to legal requirements.”
“This reckless approach undermined the integrity of our nation’s immigration system and jeopardized the safety and security of the American people. Corrective actions are now being taken to ensure those in the United States deserve to be here,” she said.
Refugees review ‘farce’
News of the memo, first reported by Reuters, sparked alarm and outrage among humanitarian and refugee groups.
“Refugees who enter the United States through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program are already some of the most highly vetted immigrants in the United States,” Sharif Ali, director of the International Refugee Assistance Project, said in a statement.
“They are here fleeing war, violence, and persecution and seeking safety and stability. Threatening them in this way is an insult not only to refugees, but to everyone who has worked for decades to maintain the integrity of this program.”
Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International, criticized the review as a “travesty”.
“The government knows that these refugees are undergoing intense screening, so it’s hard to see this as anything other than a malicious attempt to strip protection from people who need it,” he told USA TODAY.
“Families who survived the war, persecution, and chaos of the U.S. withdrawal now find themselves forced into precarious situations once again by their own government,” Sean Vandiver, president of Afghanistan Evac, an organization that resettles Afghan allies after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, said in a statement.
“These individuals have already gone through the most thorough vetting process in the world, including multiple agencies, biometric checks, and multi-layered security vetting.”
“This plan is shockingly ill-conceived,” said Naomi Steinberg, vice president of U.S. policy and advocacy at refugee advocacy group HIAS.
“It would re-traumatize tens of thousands of vulnerable refugees who have already gone through years of security screening before setting foot on American soil.”
