A Florida U.S Congresswoman is calling out the Trump administration over its decision to offer white South Africans refugee status after effectively ending refugee admissions for all other groups, including those living in dangerous conditions in Afghanistan and Haiti.
Representative Frederica Wilson (D-FL), a member of the Black Congressional Caucus, said amid an ongoing crackdown on immigrants of color, the administration is engaging in “the most blatant show of white supremacy in America in the history of the world,” according to Raw Story.
“It is a slap in the face to every African American and every person in this country who believes in the rule of law,” Wilson said last week, following President Donald Trump’s meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.
When Ramaphosa visited the White House last week for a meeting with President Donald Trump, Trump ambushed him with a video purporting to show the genocide of white farmers, which has since been widely debunked. Ramaphosa also quickly denied the conspiracy claims.
The former head of news for the British TV network Channel 4, Dorothy Byrnes, who has covered South Africa, told radio station LBC, “There is no genocide against Afrikaners, that was absolute drivel.”
“Overwhelmingly, and this is covered, and I have covered it myself, the big problem of violence in South Africa inordinately affects Black people. South Africa has a terrible problem with violent crime, and the chief victims are Black people.”
The country does have the highest murder rate in the world, and, as Byrnes mentioned, the majority of victims are Black, according to reporting from Reuters. Trump, though has falsely claimed white South Afrikaners are the victims of government-sponsored genocide. Dozens were admitted into the U.S. earlier this month as refugees.
“We’re deporting thousands of people, and he’s bringing in white Afrikaners who he says he’s gonna uplift, get health insurance, get jobs, resettle and housing,” Wilson told Raw Story.
“I mean, what an insult, right? And also the foundation for his conspiracy theories, saying that there’s this genocide happening, that is insane and none of it is true.
Ramaphosa was hoping to discuss economic cooperation with Trump, the U.S. is South Africa’s second-largest trading partner, and the country’s other urgent domestic problems. But Trump instead doubled down on the discredited claims of white genocide, and as Lok Darjee with the group Refugee Civic Action put it in an op-ed for The Hill: Trump “dismissed Ramaphosa’s explanations and showed no interest in the country’s post-apartheid governance or the crime and inequality affecting both Black and white South Africans.
“I think that the way that he acted when the president of South Africa came, to try to embarrass … one of our African countries’ heads of state, was just an insult,” Wilson said.
Congressman Emmanuel Cleaver (D-MO), former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, called the meeting “embarrassing,” according to MSN.
Cleaver said Ramaphosa was “set up,” similar to the volatile meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky earlier this year.
“You know, in some ways we should have known (Trump was) going to do that when he met with African leaders,” Cleaver said.
“He’s divisive in his spirit. And so I guess he can’t help himself,” he added.
On the same day the 59 white South Africans arrived on May 12, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, announced the U.S. was ending temporary protected status for more than 9,000 Afghans who risked their lives working with the U.S. during its 20-year war against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
