Trump authorizes admission of 10K additional white South African refugees

By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter Wednesday, May 27, 2026

President Donald Trump authorized the admission of additional white South Africans into the United States on Tuesday, drawing calls from an Evangelical refugee resettlement agency to reinstitute the full scope of the refugee resettlement program after it was mostly halted last year. 

A presidential determination filed in the Federal Register will allow for an additional 10,000 South Africans through the U.S. refugee admissions program through the end of fiscal year 2026, which raises the total refugee admission ceiling for 2026 to 17,500.

Trump declared that “an unforeseen emergency refugee situation now exists due to recent increases in the incitement of racially motivated violence on the part of the Government of South Africa and leaders of prominent political parties in South Africa, as well as new disruptions of United States Refugee Admissions Program operations in South Africa.”

“I hereby determine that the admission to the United States of Afrikaners from South Africa in response to this emergency is justified by the grave humanitarian concerns and is otherwise in the national interest, that the admission of these refugees cannot be accomplished under the refugee ceiling of 7,500 for Fiscal Year 2026 as authorized in PD 2025-13, and that an increase in the ceiling to 17,500 is warranted,” he added.

Afrikaners are a white South African people group mainly descended from Dutch settlers who arrived in South Africa in the 1600s.

Trump first made the resettlement of Afrikaners into the U.S. a priority last year in response to what top White House adviser Stephen Miller described as “race-based persecution” of white South Africans by South Africa’s black-led government.

Trump has faced criticism for his suspension of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program in an executive order signed on his first day in office.

While the executive order broadly suspended the admission of refugees into the U.S., it authorizes the secretary of state and the secretary of homeland security to “jointly determine to admit aliens to the United States as refugees on a case-by-case basis, in their discretion, but only so long as they determine that the entry of such aliens as refugees is in the national interest and does not pose a threat to the security or welfare of the United States.”

In a series of statements published Tuesday, leaders of the Evangelical humanitarian organization World Relief, which is authorized to resettle refugees in the U.S. by the State Department, called on the Trump administration to restore the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program as it was previously configured, noting that it resettled tens of thousands of persecuted Christians.

In fiscal year 2024, the last full fiscal year before Trump's return to the Oval Office, nearly 30,000 Christians were resettled from the 50 countries known for being the top persecutors of the faith, World Relief reports. 

“Around the world, 388 million Christians are persecuted for their faith, 315 million of whom suffer in just 50 countries known for particular cruelty toward Christians,” said World Relief President and CEO Myal Greene.

"Now, in 2026, the need persists. If anything, headlines of violence and persecution toward Christians around the world have increased,” he added. “We call on the administration to meet that need in a historically commensurate way.”

World Relief maintains that paths to entry into the U.S. “remain entirely closed to those who meet the traditional legal definition of a refugee, individuals who have fled their countries of origin because of persecution on account of reasons such as their faith, political opinion or race.”

A Lifeway Research poll of 667 Protestant pastors conducted in April found that less than one-fifth support prioritizing the admission of Afrikaners into the U.S., and 2% think that no refugees should be admitted to the U.S. at all. Eight in 10 pastors (81%) said that “the U.S. has a moral responsibility to accept refugees.”