President Donald Trump’s reform of US refugee policies has created a major shift in the number and nationalities of people admitted to the country, data released by Washington has indicated.
Refugee Admissions Data
Since October 2025, 4,499 refugees were granted entry into the US, the Refugee Processing Center says. All were South African nationals, except three from Afghanistan.
In the last full fiscal year of his predecessor, Joe Biden’s administration, which started in October 2023, 125,000 people were accepted from 85 countries.
Trump’s Refugee Policy Overhaul
Last year, Trump paused all refugee admissions, including for applicants from war zones.
He however permitted Afrikaners, a white minority group he said was persecuted by the South African government, to seek resettlement. Pretoria however kicked against the characterisation, denying any wrongdoing.
In announcing immigration policy overhaul, Trump said it would help strengthen national security and public safety.
Priority was to be given to Afrikaner South Africans and “other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination in their respective homelands,” according to an announcement.
Diplomatic Tensions Between US and South Africa
Diplomatic tensions between Washington and Pretoria have been rising since Trump returned to the White House.
South Africa’s ambassador in the US, Ebrahim Rasool, was over a year ago expelled after accusing Trump of “mobilising a supremacism” and trying to “project white victimhood as a dog whistle.”
Then, in the Oval Office in May, Trump confronted his South African counterpart, Cyril Ramaphosa, where he claimed that white farmers in South Africa were targets of persecution and “genocide.”
South Africa’s Response
In October last year, the South African government criticised the US decision to prioritise refugee applications from white Afrikaners, saying claims of a white genocide have been widely discredited and lacked reliable evidence.
