July 27th 2025.
In July, the top U.S. Embassy official in South Africa reached out to the Trump administration to clarify if their controversial repatriation program, which has only been utilized by white South Africans so far, was also available to non-white candidates who met the eligibility requirements. Despite the U.S. State Department's stance that the program was open to all, a Trump administration official responded by stating that it was exclusively for whites.
According to Reuters, President Trump's executive order in February only specified that the program was intended for "Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination," a term commonly used for South Africans with Dutch ancestry. However, when the U.S. Embassy's Charge d'affaires, David Greene, inquired about the possibility of mixed-race individuals, also known as "colored" in South Africa, applying for the program, Spencer Chretien, the highest ranking official at the State Department's refugee and migration bureau, replied via email that the program was not open to anyone other than white South Africans.
When Reuters followed up with the State Department on July 18 for clarification, they did not directly address Chretien's comments, but did mention that the program's scope was broader than what he had indicated. This echoes the statement on the State Department's website that applicants must either be of Afrikaner descent or belong to a racial minority in South Africa.
This is the first reported instance of tension between the U.S. Embassy and the State Department, highlighting the difficulties of enforcing a racially exclusive policy in a country as diverse as South Africa, where both mixed-race Afrikaans speakers and white English-speaking South Africans reside. Despite Trump's campaign promise to tighten immigration policies and the suspension of refugee applications globally, he also stated after coming back into office that the United States would only welcome immigrants who could assimilate fully and appropriately, which implies a discriminatory refugee policy.
In February, Trump issued an executive order that echoed far-right beliefs that white South Africans have been discriminated against by the black majority in the country. However, the South African government has refuted these claims. Trump's order asserted that Afrikaners were victims of "violence against racially disfavored landowners."
Officially, the White House, according to a statement from a Trump administration official, maintains that the program is not restricted by race, even though the majority of individuals who have been resettled are white. "We will prioritize refugee admissions for South African citizens, including Afrikaners and other racial minorities in South Africa, who have been targeted by the discriminatory laws of the South African government," the White House official told Reuters.
However, as Pauline Bax, the African program deputy director for the International Crisis Group, explained to News Nation in April, white South Africans do not meet the criteria for refugee status, despite Trump's order placing them in that category. "Perhaps they may have more economic opportunities than they realize here in South Africa, but the idea that they are refugees is completely false. There is no persecution. The truth is that South Africa had an apartheid system where whites held power in politics and the economy. Even low-skilled white individuals, mostly Afrikaans, who had limited prospects, could easily secure a government job...it's simply not true," Bax stated.
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