President Trump has capped refugee admissions for fiscal 2027 at 17,500 and directed that the slots go primarily to Afrikaners from South Africa. He signed the determination on Sept. 25. The administration released it Thursday, as the new fiscal year began, and it appeared in the Federal Register on Friday.
The new ceiling starts the year where the last one finished. Trump's determination for fiscal 2026, signed Sept. 30, 2025, set the limit at 7,500. In May he raised that year's ceiling to 17,500 with an emergency determination. That order cited what it described as recent increases in "the incitement of racially motivated violence on the part of the Government of South Africa and leaders of prominent political parties in South Africa," and it reserved the added slots for Afrikaners. President Biden's ceiling for fiscal 2025 was 125,000.
The allocation language is tighter this time. Last year's determination said admissions would go primarily to Afrikaners "and other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination in their respective homelands." The new one says only that they shall "primarily be allocated among Afrikaners from South Africa" under a February 2025 executive order. That order told the secretaries of State and Homeland Security to prioritize humanitarian relief, including resettlement as refugees, for "Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination." As the May order did, the new determination also allows applicants processed under it to be considered refugees while still "within their countries of nationality or habitual residence."
None of this reopens the wider program. Admissions under the determination remain subject to Trump's January 2025 order suspending refugee entry unless the secretaries of State and Homeland Security jointly find that an admission is in the national interest and does not threaten the country's security or welfare. They are also bound by an order requiring the most stringent identity verification applied to any class of foreign national, and by a proclamation restricting the entry of certain foreign nationals. The International Rescue Committee, a resettlement agency, said the administration allocated no slots to refugees who fled danger anywhere else in the world.
The State Department previewed the figure in a notice sent to Congress on Sept. 22, part of the consultations the determination says preceded it, and argued that Afrikaners face discrimination in South Africa. "Afrikaners face the seizure of agricultural property without compensation; government policies designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education, and business; and hateful rhetoric fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored minorities," the department wrote. It put the cost of the resettlement effort at about $500 million. The notice also said the United States "anticipates that Afrikaners from South Africa will fully assimilate into the United States in a manner that preserves taxpayer resources for U.S. citizens."
Since the first group of Afrikaners arrived at Washington Dulles International Airport in May 2025, the administration has resettled thousands of them while effectively closing the program to most other people fleeing persecution. Last month it sanctioned South African officials it held responsible for discriminating against the minority. South Africa's government has consistently denied persecuting Afrikaners, and South African authorities have strongly denied claims of a white genocide.
Refugee advocacy groups objected. "Not only does an admissions goal of 17,500 Afrikaners not meet the scale of global displacement, it unlawfully excludes vulnerable refugees who have waited for years if not decades for resettlement," said Rricha deCant, senior director of policy and climate at the International Refugee Assistance Project, which is challenging the administration's refugee policies in court. Hans Van de Weerd, the International Rescue Committee's senior vice president for resettlement, asylum and integration, said the program "should welcome the world's most vulnerable." He pointed to Afghans who risked their lives to support the American mission in Afghanistan and to persecuted religious and ethnic minorities.