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Report: ‘Thousands’ of South African Refugees to Arrive in U.S. by End of Summer

“Thousands” of white South African refugees may be in the United States by the end of the summer as massive amounts of applications from Afrikaners — an ethnic minority in the country — continue to pour in, the Daily Caller reported.

A U.S. Department of State official told the outlet on Friday that the Trump administration is hoping to take in many more than the small group of 59 Afrikaners that arrived in Washington, DC, last month.

“We won’t be talking about dozens of arrivals, but hundreds and perhaps thousands,” the official said. While they did not specify an exact time frame, the official added that “we’ll start to massively scale this up” towards the “second half of summer.” 

Referring to a backlog of more than 50,000 applications for refugee status from Afrikaners, who frequently face political and racial violence in their home country, the official added that this number will “continue to rise.”

As the first group of a few dozen Afrikaners was welcomed into the U.S. by the State Department on May 12, President Donald Trump blasted the establishment media for refusing to cover the “genocide” taking place against white farmers in South Africa.

“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, and farmers are being killed,” Trump told reporters in the White House. “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, and the newspapers and the media — television media — doesn’t even talk about it,” he continued. “If it were the other way around, they’d talk about it. That would be the only story they’d talk about.”

According to the State Department official, every Afrikaner who has been granted refugee status in the U.S. thus far “has demonstrated a persecution claim.”

“People have suffered attacks on their farms that were racially motivated,” they explained.

Despite the allegations of persecution against white people in his country, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has repeatedly insisted that they are not victims, Breitbart News reported.

“They are leaving because they don’t want to embrace the changes taking place in our country in accordance with our Constitution,” Ramaphosa claimed soon after news broke of the first group of refugees.

Speaking to reporters a short while later, the president called the refugees “cowardly” for “running away.”

Ramaphosa even went so far as to defend violent political chants calling to “Kill the Boer” and to “Kill the Farmer,” arguing that his country simply values “freedom of expression.”

Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram. 



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Rubio to Sen. Kaine on Afrikaners: ‘You Don’t Like That They’re White’

Secretary of State Marco Rubio clashed with Democrats over the Trump administration’s recent acceptance of South African refugees, telling Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) that he does not “like the fact that they’re white” in a Tuesday exchange.

The heated conversation took place during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, with Kaine calling the State Department’s claims of “government-sponsored racial discrimination” against the minority Afrikaner population “specious.”

Implying that the U.S. government has given Afrikaners preferential treatment to become legal refugees due to their race, Kaine asked, “Can you have a different standard based upon the color of somebody’s skin? Would that be acceptable?”

“I’m not the one arguing that, apparently you are because you don’t like the fact that they’re white and that’s why they’re coming,” Rubio shot back:

 

“The United States has a right to pick and choose who they allow into the United States,” the secretary continued, before being interrupted by the senator. 

“Based on the color of somebody’s skin?” Kaine again pressed. 

Rubio replied, “You’re the one that’s talking about the color of their skin, not me. These are people whose farms were burned down and they were killed because of the color of their skin.”

The spat stemmed from less than 60 white South African refugees touching down in the United States on May 12, with President Donald Trump condemning the “genocide that’s taking place” against them.

Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau welcomed the group, which included families with young children, at Dulles International Airport, decrying the “unjust racial discrimination” and “violence” they faced in their home country.

“They were really subject to very serious, egregious, and targeted threats, and we wish them well in their journey in the United States,” Landau told Breitbart News at the time. “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.”

Kaine continued in his remarks on Tuesday, “Now we’re creating a special pathway for white Afrikaner farmers in a country governed by a unity government that includes the Afrikaner parties.”

“Would you agree, Mr. Secretary, that if we’re interpreting the phrase ‘a well-founded fear of persecution’, we should apply that standard evenhandedly?”

Rubio responded, “I think we should apply it in the national security interest of the United States.”

“The United States has the right to choose who it allows in and to prioritize that choice,” he added.

“And should that be applied evenhandedly?” Kaine asked, to which Rubio replied, “Our foreign policy does not require evenhandedness.”

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, the Maryland Democrat who led the charge to El Salvador to advocate for accused MS-13 gang member and alleged wife-beater Kilmar Abrego Garcia, also had some angry words for Rubio during the hearing.

“I regret voting for you,” Van Hollen told the secretary, who was unanimously confirmed by the Senate in January. 

“Your regret for voting for me confirms I’m doing a good job,” Rubio responded:

Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram. 



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FACT CHECK: South African President Claims Afrikaners Aren’t Persecuted

CLAIM: White South Africans — members of the Afrikaner, or Boer, minority group — do not face racial discrimination or persecution by the South African government.

VERDICT: FALSE. Major political leaders in the country have called for the murder of Boers to thousands of supporters, and the government recently passed a law that could lead to the expropriation of land without compensation, South Africa-born Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Joel Pollak told Fox News this week.

Speaking with anchor Will Cain, Pollak touched on President Donald Trump’s recent use of the terms “land confiscation,” “discrimination,” and “genocide” to describe the Afrikaners’ plight after a small group arrived in the United States as refugees on Monday:

“Of those three terms, genocide might be a bit premature,” he said. “But, when you look at the statements of leading South African politicians, notably Julius Malema, who held a rally on South Africa’s Human Rights Day in March and proclaimed ‘Kill the farmer, shoot the farmer, kill the Boer’… That ought to have been taken up by South Africa’s judicial system, but the courts decided not to intervene.”

Malema, the leader of South Africa’s far-left Economic Freedom Fighters party and a member of the National Assembly, regularly leads supporters in chants calling to “kill the Boer”:

Just this March, South Africa’s highest court refused to allow an appeal of a lower court’s decision that the phrase “Kill the Boer” was not hate speech or incitement under the law,” Breitbart News reported.

Pollak went on to explain, “Even in this country, that would be outlawed. It’s not protected speech under the First Amendment if it’s incitement to immediate harm or violence. That is what that is. So, members of that group certainly have good reason to fear the government.”

On real discriminatory legislation that has been passed, the conservative radio host also brought up how South African President Cyril Ramaphosa signed the Expropriation Act earlier this year, allowing the seizure of property without compensation.

Pollak said, “The South African government passed a law called the Expropriation Act, which allows property, not just farms, to be taken without compensation. And it is circulating regulations that restrict the percentage of white employees that can work in various industries.”

“So the president is accurate that members of that group are facing racial discrimination and the threat of expropriation,” he added.

Since the U.S. accepted a mere 59 Afrikaner refugees, Ramaphosa called them “cowardly” and claimed that they do not face discrimination, Breitbart News reported.

Cain went on to draw a connection between American diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideology to what is going on in South Africa, to which Pollak concurred:

That is exactly right. I do think there’s a strong interest in the United States in this story because of the rollback of DEI. This is the logical consequence of DEI that people are expropriated and denied job opportunities and that they have to seek their opportunities elsewhere. 

There’s also a broader strategic element in all of this. South Africa is an important ally of the United States in Africa, and these racist policies inside South Africa actually make South Africa weaker. We need South Africa to be strong. Racial discrimination weakens a society, any society. We don’t want to see South Africa become another Rwanda. We need South Africa to be strong, and hopefully this gets the message across that South Africa needs to reform. 

By the way, not just a planeload of 59 refugees — 70,000 Afrikaners have applied for refugee status. And if nothing else, the American rugby team is about to get a lot better. 

In a final remark before the Fox News segment ended, Pollak commented on an Episcopal charity group for quitting a taxpayer-funded refugee program because of Trump’s welcome of the Afrikaners.

“There is a reluctance to help members of so-called privileged groups, but how easily we forget that it is often privileged groups who are the targets of these kinds of threats,” he said. “The Tutsi in Rwanda, for example, were seen as more highly educated and professional — and a million were murdered in the Rwandan genocide.” 

“So I’m afraid the church’s stance there falls short of a moral standard,” he added.

Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram. 



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