DULLES, VIRGINIA — White South African refugees were welcomed into the United States by the Department of State and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Monday, as President Donald Trump condemned the “genocide that’s taking place” against them.
Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Troy Edgar visited Washington Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia outside of Washington, DC to meet the group of Afrikaners — which included families with small children:
The 59 South African nationals — many of whom were waving American flags when they entered the airplane hangar to meet Landau and Edgar — are the first Afrikaner refugees to be relocated to the U.S. after Trump’s February 7 executive order suspending foreign aid to the country and offering asylum to the white minority group.
In his order, Trump blasted “countless government policies designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education, and business, and hateful rhetoric and government actions fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners.”
Speaking with Breitbart News shortly after the refugees deboarded their government-chartered flight, Landau stated that white South Africans, including some of the new arrivals, were “victims of unjust racial discrimination” and “violence”:
The president made it clear that Afrikaners in South Africa who were the victims of unjust racial discrimination would be welcome to come to the United States, and he’s now delivering on that promise. The Deputy Secretary and I just spoke to some of the folks who arrived on this flight, and they tell quite harrowing stories of the violence that they faced in South Africa that was not progressed by the authorities — by the unjust application of the law. The United States, as we were proud to say, stands for equal justice under law and the fair and impartial application of the law. And again, this is a group that has not experienced that and has, to the contrary, experienced violence, and really feared for their lives in South Africa.
They were really subject to very serious, egregious, and targeted threats, and we wish them well in their journey in the United States. We underscored for them that the American people are a welcoming and generous people, and we underscore the importance of assimilation into the United States, which is one of the very important factors that we look to in refugee admissions and through this resettlement program for these folks who were vetted in South Africa. And we’re sending a clear message that the United States really rejects the egregious persecution of people on the basis of race in South Africa, and we welcome these people to the United States and to a new future.
I think if you look at the executive order that the president issued back on February 7 of this year, it talks about the terrible Expropriation Act that was enacted last year in South Africa that allows for the expropriation without compensation of farmland. A fair number of these refugees were farmers who farmed this particular land for generations and now face the threat, not only of expropriation, but also of direct violence. We had a chance to speak to them… Many of these folks have experience with threatening invasions of their homes, their farms, and a real lack of interest or success of the government in doing anything about this situation. As well, obviously, as several very vociferous South African politicians repeating things like “Kill the Boer, Kill the Afrikaner,” and these people have been living under a shadow of violence and terror for some time now.
Edgar also shared some remarks, thanking Trump and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem “for the opportunity to come down here and welcome these folks from South Africa,” and touting the U.S.’s past acceptance of refugees from other troubled nations as a success:
It was great to greet these folks that came in, to hear their stories, to hear what they’ve been through. This is a real situation. These people have went through a lot of stuff, and we’re just grateful to have them in the U.S. Many of us know the United States has a long history of bringing people over. My wife was an Iranian. Came over during the regime change in the 70s, and she’s now here. Speaks five languages, a schoolteacher. We think the American dream is possible for the South Africans. We’re super excited for them. And the deputy secretary and myself have given these people our personal information. Said anything we can do to help them be successful, we just want to wish them the best.
Trump also spoke on the refugees during a White House press briefing while they were landing just miles away at Dulles, denouncing the “genocide” they and other white South Africans are facing:
“They’re being killed, and we don’t want to see people be killed,” the president told reporters. “Now, South Africa leadership is coming to see me, I understand, sometime next week. And you know we’re supposed to have an, I guess a G20 meeting there or something. We’re having a G20 meeting — I don’t know how we can go unless that situation’s taken care of.”
The 2025 G20 summit, featuring heads of state and government, will be held in November in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Trump continued, “But it’s a genocide that’s taking place that you people don’t want to write about. But it’s a terrible thing that’s taking place. Farmers are being killed, they happen to be white. But whether they’re white or black makes no difference to me. But white farmers are being brutally killed and their land is being confiscated in South Africa.”
Going on to lambast the mainstream media for their refusal to report on the persecution of the European-descended minority in the African nation, the president said, “And the newspapers, and the media, and television media doesn’t even talk about it. If it were the other way around, they’d talk about it. That would be the only story they’d talk about.”
“And I don’t care who they are,” he reiterated. “I don’t care about their race, their color. I don’t care about their height, their weight. I don’t care about anything. I just know that what’s happening is terrible. I have people that live in South Africa, they say it’s a terrible situation taking place. So, we’ve essentially extended citizenship to those people to escape from that violence and come here.”
Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram.
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