CAPE TOWN, South Africa — A group of 49 white South Africans departed their homeland Sunday for the United States on a private charter plane having been offered refugee status by the Trump administration under a new program announced in February.
The group, which included families and small children, was due to arrive at Dulles International Airport outside Washington on Monday morning local time, according to Collen Msibi, a spokesperson for South Africa’s transport ministry.
They are the first Afrikaners — a white minority group in South Africa — to be relocated after U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order on Feb. 7 accusing South Africa’s Black-led government of racial discrimination against them and announcing a program to offer them relocation to America.
The South African government said it is “completely false” that Afrikaners are being persecuted.
The Trump administration has fast-tracked their applications while pausing other refugee programs, halting arrivals from Afghanistan, Iraq, most of sub-Saharan Africa and other countries in a move being challenged in court.
Refugee groups have questioned why the white South Africans are being prioritized ahead of people from countries wracked by war and natural disasters. Vetting for refugee status in the U.S. often takes years.
The Trump administration says the South African government is pursuing racist, anti-white policies through affirmative action laws and a new land expropriation law it says targets Afrikaners’ land. The government says those claims are based on misinformation and there is no racism against Afrikaners and no land has been expropriated, although the contentious law has been passed and is the focus of criticism in South Africa.
South Africa also denies U.S. claims that Afrikaners are being targeted in racially motivated attacks in some rural communities. Instead, the South African government said Afrikaners — who are the descendants of Dutch and French colonial settlers — are “amongst the most economically privileged” in the country.
The first Afrikaner refugees were traveling on a flight operated by the Tulsa, Oklahoma-based charter company Omni Air International, Msibi said. They were to fly to Dakar, Senegal and stop there to refuel before heading for Dulles.
The South African government said there was no justification for them being relocated but said it wouldn’t stop them and respected their freedom of choice.
The flight will be the first in a “much larger-scale relocation effort,” White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told reporters on Friday. Miller said that what was happening to Afrikaners in South Africa “fits the textbook definition of why the refugee program was created.”
“This is persecution based on a protected characteristic — in this case, race. This is race-based persecution,” he said.
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