Hey, you're listening to the On the Media Midweek podcast. I'm Michael Lohinger. On Monday, President Trump announced a proposed expansion to the refugee program to allow 10,000 more people into the country, up from a record low of 7,500 refugee admissions.

For context, before 2017, the average annual cap for Republican and Democratic administrations was 95,000.

But there's a caveat here.

Trump's new 10,000 refugees will consist solely of Afrikaners, white South Africans, a group that the Trump administration claims faces racial persecution in their home

country.

We reported on this story exactly a year ago when the first round of Afrikaners were on their

way to these shores.

The first group of white South Africans granted refugee status by the Trump administration

arrived in the U.S. Monday.

The group included 49 Afrikaners,

which is an ethnic group in South Africa, made up of descendants of European colonists.

The United States really rejects the egregious persecution of people on the basis of race

in South Africa, and we welcome these people to the United States.

Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau last May, answering a question from the BBC

about why Afrikaners and not people from, say, war zones, had been granted refugee status.

The criteria are making sure that refugees did not pose any challenge to our national security

and that they could be assimilated easily into our country.

And all of these folks who have just come in today have been carefully vetted,

assimilated easily.

Right.

Multiple outlets at the time reported that one of these carefully vetted Afrikaners had posted on X in

2023 that, quote, Jews are untrustworthy and a dangerous group.

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