Trump Slashes Refugee Resettlement Numbers, With Priority for Afrikaners

President Donald Trump is capping annual refugee admissions at 7,500 and giving preference for the dwindling spots to white South Africans, according to a Thursday memo from the White House.

The decision would result in a drastic drop in slots for refugees from the 125,000 set by the Biden administration last year, and mark a shift from the U.S.’s longtime commitment to admitting people fleeing conflict or persecution abroad. It would also dramatically change the demographics of refugees, who typically come from many countries around the world.

Instead, the administration has prioritized Afrikaners, a white ethnic group in South Africa that Trump and his allies say has faced racial discrimination.

Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, said the policy change was one of the administration’s most despicable actions.

“We are essentially imposing Jim Crow-era restrictions on our refugee policy; this will come back to haunt us,” he told reporters.

Thursday’s memo makes official a plan first reported by The New York Times to severely curtail the program and focus on Afrikaners.

Trump’s decision to give Afrikaners refugee status started with the issuance of an executive order near the beginning of his second term.

South African leaders and experts have pushed back on the claim that Afrikaners are facing systemic discrimination or genocide. The country’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, told Trump at a White House meeting in May that the government was not discriminating against or taking land without compensation from the white minority, which owns most of the country’s land.

The refugee resettlement cap also formalizes a massive cut in admissions Trump began via executive order on his first day of office.

The Trump administration is facing a class-action lawsuit over that order, which halted entry into the country through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.

The International Refugee Assistance Project, one of the groups behind the suit, condemned the new resettlement cap.

“This determination makes it painfully clear that the Trump administration values politics over protection,” the group’s president, Sharif Aly, said in a statement. “By privileging Afrikaners while continuing to ban thousands of refugees who have already been vetted and approved, the administration is once again politicizing a humanitarian program.”