First flight carrying white South African refugees arrives in US

President Donald Trump says he is admitting Afrikaners as refugees because of 'genocide taking place'

The first 59 white South Africans granted refugee status after being deemed victims of racial discrimination under an offer by US President Donald Trump landed in the US on Monday.

Within days of returning to office, Mr Trump blocked most refugee admissions from the rest of the world but is prioritising Afrikaners, the descendants of mostly Dutch settlers.

The group from South Africa arrived at Dulles International Airport outside Washington on a private charter plane and was greeted by a government delegation. They were expected to fly to different US destinations including Idaho and Minnesota, Reuters reported. A representative for the US Department of Health and Human Services told the Associated Press that more arrivals were expected in the coming months.

Mr Trump told reporters on Monday that he is admitting them as refugees because of the “genocide that’s taking place”. He said that in post-apartheid South Africa, white farmers are “being killed”, and that he plans to address the issue with South African leadership next week.

The treatment of white South Africans as refugees fleeing oppression has drawn a mixture of alarm and ridicule from South African authorities, who say the Trump administration has waded into a domestic issue it does not understand. The South African media, too, has shown little sympathy for the asylum seekers, with many outlets keeping them off front pages and calling them "refugees" in quotation marks.

South Africa maintains there is no evidence of persecution. Speaking at a conference in Ivory Coast, President Cyril Ramaphosa said the white South Africans had ostensibly left because they were opposed to policies aimed at addressing racial inequality persisting since apartheid. "We think that the American government has got the wrong end of the stick here, but we'll continue talking to them," he said.

Since Nelson Mandela brought democracy into South Africa in 1994, the white minority that once ruled has retained most of the wealth it amassed since colonial times.

Since his return to the White House in January, Mr Trump has cut all US financial assistance to South Africa, citing disapproval of its land policy and of its genocide case at the International Court of Justice against Washington's ally Israel. The Trump administration also said in May that the South African ambassador is "no longer welcome" in the US.

“It is baffling as to why the Trump administration is admitting Afrikaners for resettlement while continuing an indefinite suspension for thousands of legitimate asylum seekers who have fled persecution, often because their lives were at risk," Democratic senator Jeanne Shaheen said in a statement, highlighting that the UN last year found no South Africans were eligible for refugee status.

"The decision by this administration to put one group at the front of the line is clearly politically motivated and an effort to rewrite history."