Trump offered White South Africans a new life. Thousands took him up on it.

[Zorro]

The numbers show the radical transformation of America’s refugee program.

On a recent weekday afternoon, a 41-year-old single mother from South Africa who had arrived in the United States this spring as a refugee pulled into a coffee shop in central Maine.

Her life in America was off to a quick start. That day, she had bought a car, a 2014 Nissan, from fellow newly arrived South Africans. She was about to begin a cleaning job that paid better than the one she initially had at Dunkin’. Her two daughters were settling into the local public schools; one had joined the softball team.

Adri, who spoke on the condition that only her first name be used out of concern that she would be targeted for sharing her story, had tried to leave South Africa for years, exploring ways to immigrate to Canada or Europe, without success. Then she learned that the United States would accept Afrikaners like her as refugees. She saw it as her last chance to go.

“I was walking in faith every day,” said Adri, a tall woman with dark, spiky hair. “And God’s not doing anything small.”

Adri is one of 6,069 people who have been admitted to the United States as refugees since October, according to State Department figures. All but three were from South Africa.

Her journey reflects the wholesale transformation of the refugee program under the Trump administration, which early last year froze refugee admissions save for one specific group — people like Adri. Now nearly all those arriving under the program are White South Africans, many of them Afrikaner, an ethnic minority who speak Afrikaans and trace their roots to early Dutch settlers. These newest arrivals have settled in almost every state, with the largest numbers going to California, Florida, Michigan and Texas.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2026/05/22/trump-offered-white-south-africans-new-life-thousands-took-him-up-it/