Trump administration weighing refugee cap of 40,000 with focus on white South Africans: Reuters exclusive

U.S. President Donald Trump meets South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, May 21, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

WASHINGTON - U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is discussing a refugee admissions cap of around 40,000 for the coming year with a majority allocated to white South Africans, according to two U.S. officials briefed on the matter and an internal refugee program email, reflecting a major shift in the U.S. approach to refugees.

Angie Salazar, the top refugee program official at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, told state-level refugee workers that she expected the cap to be 40,000, according to an email summary of an August 1 meeting reviewed by Reuters.

The two officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said some 30,000 of the 40,000 spaces would be devoted to Afrikaners, a largely Dutch-descended minority in South Africa that Trump has prioritized for resettlement.

Trump’s focus on resettling Afrikaners could upend the precedent around the refugee program, which for decades had bipartisan support.

The 40,000-person cap would be a sharp drop from the 100,000 refugees brought in by former president Joe Biden in fiscal year 2024, but higher than the record-low 15,000 person ceiling Trump set for fiscal 2021 before ending his first term.

A separate person familiar with the matter said that in addition to the 40,000 figure, a cap as low as 12,000 had also been discussed.

There are 37 million refugees worldwide, according to a United Nations estimate.

Trump immediately froze refugee admissions after taking office in January, but weeks later launched a program for Afrikaners, saying the white minority group suffered racial discrimination and violence in majority-Black South Africa, claims that were rejected by South Africa’s government.

The Trump administration has wrestled internally over whether non-white South Africans could qualify for the refugee program, Reuters reported in July.

In addition to Afrikaners, the Trump administration expects to bring in some Afghans who aided the U.S. government during the conflict in Afghanistan and is weighing whether to resettle Ukrainians, the email said. Some spaces would remain unallocated to potentially be filled by other nationalities, the email and officials said.

White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly stressed that no decisions were final until Trump issued his determination for fiscal year 2026, which begins on October 1.

“President Trump has a humanitarian heart, which is why he has welcomed these courageous individuals to the United States,” Kelly said. “Refugee admission caps will be determined next month, and any numbers discussed at this point are pure speculation.”

A senior State Department official pointed to the department’s recent human rights report, which raised concerns about “inflammatory racial rhetoric against Afrikaners and other racial minorities” in South Africa.

HHS referred questions related to the refugee cap to the White House. Salazar did not respond to requests for comment.

The first group of 59 South Africans arrived in May, but only 34 more had come as of early August, a White House official said.

The U.S. State Department laid off many refugee program staffers in major workforce reductions in July. To compensate for the fired staff, workers from HHS who normally deal with domestic refugee assistance have been reassigned to the South Africa program, one of the officials said.

Thirteen HHS staffers were dispatched to Pretoria on Monday even though the majority had no direct experience screening refugees, the official said.

An HHS spokesperson said that trained staff had been detailed to support refugee resettlement but that they were not conducting interviews to determine whether a refugee had experienced persecution.

Initial struggles

Some South Africans now in the U.S. with refugee status have reached out to HHS to raise concerns about a lack of benefits to support them, one of the U.S. officials said. Trump slashed refugee benefits after taking office, including reducing cash assistance and healthcare benefits that normally last a year to four months.

One of the initial group of 59 South Africans brought into the U.S. in mid-May sent an email to HHS’ refugee office two weeks later pleading for help getting a Social Security number and access to a work permit.

The person, who went to Missoula, Montana, said their family had spent thousands of dollars to cover expenses.

“We have applied for jobs like crazy but to no avail because we found people here are not keen on hiring refugees without an SSN,” one of the family members wrote in a May 27 email to the HHS refugee program reviewed by Reuters. “We have spent about $4000 on Uber, food, Cellphone SIM Cards which don’t work.”

The person was concerned the family would not be able to find housing after a government-funded hotel stay ended in early June.

Reuters could not reach the family. The HHS spokesperson said the agency takes complaints seriously and that refugees placed in temporary housing receive support for essential needs, including food.

A person familiar with the matter said some South Africans arrived in the U.S. expecting standard refugee benefits that had been paused or reduced by Trump.

Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington; Additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Jeff Mason in Washington, and Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo and Tim Cocks in Johannesburg; Editing by Mary Milliken, Ross Colvin and Michael Learmonth, Reuters