Exclusive: Trump administration weighing refugee cap of 40,000 with focus on white South Africans [View all]

Source: Reuters

August 15, 2025 7:31 AM EDT Updated 10 hours ago


WASHINGTON, Aug 15 (Reuters) - 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.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/trump-administration-weighing-refugee-cap-40000-with-focus-white-south-africans-2025-08-15/