The administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump is preparing to resettle the first group of white South African farmers in the United States next week, U.S. media outlets reported on Thursday. The move follows Trump’s accusations of racial discrimination by the South African government over its controversial land expropriation policy.
According to reports from The Lever, NPR, and The New York Times, an internal memo dated April 30 indicated that a group of Afrikaners—white South Africans primarily of Dutch descent—was expected to arrive in the U.S. “within a few days,” possibly as early as Monday. However, officials cautioned that the exact date could shift due to logistical factors.
Trump has publicly criticized South Africa’s land reform law, which was signed into law in January and allows the government to expropriate land without compensation in exceptional cases deemed to be in the public interest. He claims the policy targets white-owned farmland and has described it as an attempt to seize “ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property.”
The former president, whose ally Elon Musk was born in South Africa, said in February that his administration would prioritize Afrikaners for refugee resettlement as victims of what he called “unjust racial discrimination.” This comes despite Trump’s earlier decision to drastically limit refugee admissions during his time in office.
In response to the land law, Trump also issued an executive order to freeze U.S. foreign aid to South Africa, escalating diplomatic tensions between Washington and Pretoria.
The Afrikaners, descendants of European settlers, have historically dominated South Africa’s agricultural sector. Their role has been a flashpoint in the country’s ongoing debate over land redistribution, especially given South Africa’s legacy of apartheid, which ended in 1994 after decades of black disenfranchisement under white minority rule.
Washington reportedly plans to resettle up to 1,000 Afrikaners by the end of the year, a move that has drawn both praise and criticism amid broader discussions on racial equity, immigration policy, and international diplomacy.
