Trump Cuts Refugee Admissions and Prioritizes White South Africans

The Trump administration is drastically cutting the number of refugees it will admit to the United States, rejecting thousands of people fleeing war and persecution while reserving the record-low number of slots for mostly white Afrikaner South Africans.

The administration lowered the ceiling of refugee admissions to just 7,500 for the fiscal year that started this month, down from the cap of 125,000 set by the Biden administration last year, according to a notice in the Federal Register posted on Thursday.

The notice made plans official that had been in the works for months. They overhaul a program that for decades made the U.S. a sanctuary from persecution and turn it into one that gives preference to English speakers and white people overseas whom Mr. Trump has pledged to protect.

Mr. Trump took steps to gut the refugee program on the first day of his second term, when he suspended refugee admissions. He then created a carve-out for South African descendants of Dutch and French settlers who arrived there in the 17th century, even as families hoping to escape war in Sudan, Iranian religious minorities previously approved to travel to the United States and people in refugee camps around the world remained in limbo.

Mr. Trump has claimed that Afrikaners face racial persecution at home, a claim disputed by government officials in South Africa. Police statistics do not show that white people are more vulnerable to violent crime than other people in South Africa. Black South Africans continue to lag behind white South Africans by virtually every economic measure.

The New York Times first reported that Mr. Trump had signed a determination to lower the ceiling of refugee admissions to a record low level earlier this month. At the time, the administration said it would make the determination official only after it had consulted with Congress, as it is required to do by law each year. But White House officials maintained that consultation would occur after the government shutdown had ended.