Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended a controversial new Trump administration policy granting refugee status to White South Africans days after the first group’s arrival in the U.S., saying people should be “celebrating” the move, not criticizing it.
“We’ve often been lectured by people all over the place about how the United States needs to continue to be a beacon for those who are oppressed abroad. Well, here’s an example where we’re doing that,” Rubio said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”
Last week, 59 people from South Africa’s Afrikaner community — White South Africans largely descended from Dutch settlers — arrived in the U.S., after President Trump earlier this year directed his government to allow South Africans of European descent, and Afrikaners in particular, to be resettled through the U.S. refugee program.
The White House, along with South African native Elon Musk, have claimed that White South Africans have been the target of oppression by the country’s government, pointing to a law that they argue is racially motivated and allows the government to seize privately held land under certain conditions. Until 1994, South Africa was under minority white rule, enforcing the brutal system of apartheid on the country’s Black majority.
President Trump signed an executive order in February directing his government to halt aid to South Africa and he has claimed a genocide is underway in the country, saying some white farmers have been killed. Asked whether there was evidence of a genocide, Rubio said “I think there’s evidence, absolutely, that people have been murdered, that people have been forcibly removed from their properties.”
South Africa does not release crime figures by race. According to BBC News, there were 12 people killed in farm attacks of the 6,953 people who were murdered in the country between October and December 2024. Of those 12, one was a farmer, while the others were farm dwellers or employees.
Rubio added that “these are people that, on the basis of their race, are having their properties taken away from them, and their lives being threatened and, in some cases, killed,”
He urged that “to move here from half a world away and leave behind the only homeland you’ve ever known, that’s not something people do lightly,” arguing that “these people are doing it for a reason.”
“So we welcome them to the United States, and I think there may be more coming soon,” he said.
The comments come as South African President Cyril Ramaphosa is set to visit the White House this week amid the tensions with the Trump administration, as the South African government has strongly denied the claims of land confiscations and racially motivated discrimination.
Kaia Hubbard is a politics reporter for CBS News Digital, based in Washington, D.C.
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