Far fewer refugees will be allowed into the U.S. in the coming year, and most of those who are admitted will be white South Africans who President Donald Trump has alleged face “unjust” racial discrimination in their country.
The Trump Administration will limit refugee admissions to no more than 7,500 during the 2026 fiscal year, the White House announced in a notice published in the Federal Register on Thursday, a dramatic 94% decrease from the 125,000 figure set last year under President Joe Biden.
The White House said the significantly reduced number of overall refugee admissions is “justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest,” but did not provide further explanation.
Admissions will also “primarily be allocated among Afrikaners from South Africa,” the notice said, as well as other victims of “illegal or unjust discrimination in their respective homelands.” It pointed to an Executive Order the President issued in February, in which Trump condemned South Africa for what he described as “countless” policies restricting the opportunities of Afrikaners and fueling “disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners.” Afrikaners, who are descendants of primarily Dutch colonial settlers who arrived in South Africa in the 1600s, governed the country from 1948 to 1994 and imposed racial separation laws known as apartheid.
Read more: The Long History of the U.S. Backing White South Africans
South African officials have strongly disputed the claims that Afrikaners are the victims of racial persecution.
“There are sufficient structures available within South Africa to address concerns of discrimination. Moreover, even if there are allegations of discrimination, it is our view that these do not meet the threshold of persecution required under domestic and international refugee law,” the South African Ministry of International Relations and Cooperation said in a statement earlier this year, contending that U.S. efforts to resettle South Africans as refugees appeared “entirely politically motivated and designed to question South Africa’s constitutional democracy.”
On the first day of his second term, Trump suspended all refugee admissions to the U.S, saying in his Executive Order that the country “lacks the ability to absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees, into its communities in a manner that does not compromise the availability of resources for Americans, that protects their safety and security, and that ensures the appropriate assimilation of refugees.” But just over two weeks later, he announced an exception for white South Africans, raising the allegations that they were being discriminated against.
In May, a chartered plane with 50 Afrikaners on board landed in the U.S. The move marked a significant shift in the country’s refugee policy—typically, refugees entering the U.S. are vetted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which refers people escaping persecution and violence in their home nations to safer countries. That office did not vet the 50 Afrikaners who arrived in the U.S. that month.
