The Trump administration has invoked emergency powers to double its refugee intake cap from 7,500 to 17,500 this fiscal year — and devote nearly every slot to white South Africans.

A State Department notice sent to Congress on Monday declared that “unforeseen developments in South Africa created an emergency refugee situation.” The document, obtained by the Associated Press, put the cost of resettling 10,000 additional Afrikaners at roughly $100 million.

The move comes as the US refugee programme remains effectively closed to everyone else. Between October 2025 and April 2026, the US admitted 6,069 refugees. According to State Department figures reported by CBS News, 6,066 of them — 99 percent — were from South Africa. Three came from Afghanistan. People fleeing wars in Congo, Sudan and elsewhere remain locked out.

President Trump has insisted that white Afrikaners face systematic violence and a “genocide” — a claim experts in South Africa have repeatedly rebutted. Farmers of all races are victims of the country’s high crime rate, and researchers have found no evidence of racially targeted killings. In a tense Oval Office meeting last year, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa told Trump the behaviour he referenced “is not government policy” and that his government is “completely opposed” to it.

South Africa’s government has called the persecution claims baseless. Official data shows white unemployment at 12 percent, compared with 48 percent for black South Africans — a gap rooted in the legacy of apartheid, which the Afrikaner minority enforced for decades.

The State Department cited “escalating hostility” from South African officials, including a December raid on a US refugee processing centre. South Africa said the raid targeted Kenyans working illegally at the facility.

The administration has also cut aid to South Africa, boycotted last year’s G20 summit in Johannesburg, and disinvited South Africa from this year’s summit at Trump’s Miami resort.

The consultation with Congress, required by law, is expected later this week. Historically, it has been a formality.

Sources

• US claims ‘emergency refugee situation’ as it admits 10,000 more white South Africans — The Guardian
• Trump administration plans to admit more white South Africans as refugees this year — Associated Press
• Trump administration proposes welcoming thousands more Afrikaners to U.S. as refugees, citing “emergency” — CBS News