The Only ‘Refugees’ Trump Wants

Esther sought to protect her family. So several years ago, Esther, her children, and other relatives fled the Democratic Republic of the Congo amid a deadly civil war. They ended up in a refugee camp in Tanzania. Realizing such a camp was unsafe for her daughter Josephine since young Christian women like her were being kidnapped and assaulted, Esther sent Josephine to South Africa so she could be safe. Meanwhile, the family spent years in the refugee resettlement program. After substantial vetting and legal hoops, Esther and other family members still in the Tanzanian camp were welcomed to the U.S. as refugees in 2016. Esther is now a U.S. citizen who lives in Boise, Idaho.

Once in the U.S., Esther applied through a family reunification program to bring her daughter Josephine to the United States. However, the first Trump administration largely dismantled the refugee resettlement program, so the application didn’t move. Esther filed a lawsuit and eventually got agencies to start moving on the pending application. By the start of this year, Josephine had been approved to come to the U.S. and began making plans to fly to the U.S. and be reunited with her mother and siblings after years of separation. Then Trump took the presidential oath of office as his hand dangled next to a Bible.

Two days after the inauguration, Trump signed an executive order suspending refugee resettlement programs. His administration even canceled the approvals of those already vetted to come — like Josephine — and refused to pay Christian and other groups for services they had already provided under government contracts to assist refugees. Esther and Josephine are both plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed in February by individuals as well as refugee resettlement groups Church World Service, Lutheran Community Services Northwest, and HIAS.

A federal judge quickly sided with the plaintiffs, issuing a preliminary injunction that ordered the administration to resume funding and refugee processing for the approximately 12,000 people approved for resettlement prior to Trump returning to the White House. Despite that, the administration then attempted to cancel contracts with the plaintiff groups, which led the judge to issue a second injunction calling the administration’s move “unlawful.” However, the administration still has not complied, thus leaving Josephine stuck in South Africa and separated from her family in Idaho.

But a plane of “refugees” from South Africa did head to the U.S. this week so people could resettle in Idaho. Unlike the Black Africans like Esther and Josephine who fled war or Asian, Middle Eastern, or Hispanic people from various countries who are actual refugees due to genocide and war, those welcomed by President Donald Trump are White descendants of those who oversaw the racist and deadly apartheid regime that ruled South Africa until 1994.

Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau (right) greets Afrikaners admitted as refugees from South Africa on May 12, 2025, at Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Virginia. (Julia Demaree Nikhinson/Associated Press)

Unlike the 12,000 people Trump blocked from coming, these new arrivals did not go through a yearslong extensive vetting process. Pushing a false narrative of “White genocide” and racist rhetoric about who is a good fit for the U.S., the anti-refugee Trump administration is spending taxpayer money to move members of the White Afrikaner community to the front of the line while ignoring court orders to reunite families like Esther and Josephine.

“We are concerned that the U.S. government has chosen to fast-track the admission of Afrikaners, while actively fighting court orders to provide life-saving resettlement to other refugee populations who are in desperate need of resettlement,” said Rick Santos, president and CEP of Church World Service (which is supported by numerous mainline Protestant and Orthodox denominations). “By resettling this population, the government is demonstrating that it still has the capacity to quickly screen, process, and depart refugees to the United States. It’s time for the administration to honor our nation’s commitment to the thousands of refugee families it abandoned with its cruel and illegal executive order.”

The disparate treatment of Josephine and Afrikaners reveals a lot about the current administration. So this issue of A Public Witness looks at what’s happening and the South African Christians pushing back against the apartheid theology propping up the Trump administration.