The first group of refugees brought into the U.S. since Donald Trump became President followed an unusual path. On his first day back in office, he suspended all refugee admissions to the U.S.—upending resettlement plans for thousands fearing persecution and violence. Eighteen days later, he announced an exception for white South Africans who “are victims of unjust racial discrimination.”
00:00The Trump administration has brought a group of white South Africans to the U.S. as refugees.
00:11When President Trump came to office in January, he stopped all refugee admissions coming into the United States.
00:17To put that in context, the U.S. admitted about 100,000 refugees last year from around the world.
00:22Now, the Trump administration has picked out a group of white Afrikaners from South Africa to bring in as refugees.
00:28These Afrikaners are descendants of Dutch settlers who came to South Africa in the 1600s as a minority group in South Africa.
00:37They were also responsible for the apartheid laws that allowed the minority white South Africans to rule the country from the 1940s until the 1990s.
00:46The Trump administration says that the South African government has passed laws in the last year that discriminate against these white South Africans.
00:54And they are subject to having their land taken away and have also been subject to violence.
01:00A Time reporter asked President Trump about his decision to admit white South Africans as refugees.
01:07This is what he said.
01:08It'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.
01:13Farmers are being killed.
01:15They happen to be white.
01:17But whether they're white or black makes no difference to me.
01:20The South African government says that police and crime statistics in the country do not support that.
01:25And there isn't data that shows that white South Africans have been targeted for violence.
01:30When this group of white South Africans landed in the United States, they were greeted by Trump administration officials,
01:35including a State Department official who called them quality seed and said that they would bloom inside the United States.
