EXCLUSIVE: State Department Corrects the Record on South African Refugees

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—President Donald Trump’s State Department says its efforts to accept Afrikaner refugees cost taxpayers a fraction of what the Biden administration spent fast tracking more than 220,000 refugees into the U.S.

The Washington Post published a story saying the State Department plans to accept around 7,000 white South African refugees.

The State Department has set a goal of processing 2,000 Afrikaners for resettlement by the end of October and an additional 4,000 by the end of November, according to the Post. These numbers are still being finalized, the department says.

The State Department confirmed the Post’s reporting that State Department officials booked and paid for 50 seats on commercial flights from South Africa to the United States, but only three people took the offer. This happened on the third week of September.

The State Department says Democrats and the media should not be outraged by the acceptance of a small number of Afrikaner refugees when the Biden administration permitted hundreds of thousands of refugees.

“The Trump administration saved American taxpayers billions of dollars by drastically reducing the number of refugees accepted into the country,” State Department deputy spokesperson Tommy Pigott said in a statement to The Daily Signal. “President Trump is delivering on his mandate to secure the border and realign immigration policy with America’s national interest, overhauling the Biden administration’s disastrous mass immigration agenda.”

In fiscal year 2024, State spent $1.2 billion to facilitate refugee resettlement, according to a State Department official.

“The Washington Post feigns concern over the costs of resettling Afrikaners while turning a blind eye to the billions of dollars spent by the Biden administration to import hundreds of thousands of migrants into the United States,” a senior State Department official said.

“The Washington Post’s article is just the outlet’s latest attempt to delegitimize the Trump administration’s efforts to provide refuge for Afrikaners, even as South African politicians have publicly called for race-based violence against them and the government passed legislation allowing for the expropriation of their farm land,” the official added.

Immediately following his inauguration, Trump signed an executive order temporarily halting the admission of most refugees. However, as of May 8, the U.S. government had granted 59 Afrikaners refugee status, and the State Department has received 8,000 inquiries. 

When South African President Cyril Ramaphosa met with the president in June, Trump showed him a video of South African politicians chanting for the killing of white farmers.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a Senate hearing in May that white farmers “live in a country where land is taken on a racial basis.” He was referring to a law established in January “allowing land seizures by the state without compensation.”

Former President Joe Biden’s refugee resettlement efforts actually cost the American taxpayer tens of billions of dollars when factoring in expenditures from the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Department of Health and Human Services, according to the State Department.

The Biden administration spent $20 billion on refugee and entrant assistance in just two years through the refugee resettlement office, the Open the Books report said. That figure included medical services, general refugee support services, and a surge in grant funding to international organizations that facilitate mass immigration into the United States. Some of the funding went toward cash assistance for immigrants to buy cars and homes or start a business, the New York Post reported.

The post EXCLUSIVE: State Department Corrects the Record on South African Refugees appeared first on The Daily Signal.