EXCLUSIVE: Trump Admin Hopes To Bring ‘Thousands’ Of Refugees From South Africa By Late Summer

The Trump administration hopes to begin taking in thousands of Afrikaner refugees from South Africa by the end of this summer, a State Department official told the Daily Caller Friday.

In February, President Donald Trump signed an executive order promoting resettling Afrikaner refugees in the U.S. In early May, 59 Afrikaners arrived in the U.S. before a meeting later in the month between Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. The official told the Caller that the number of Afrikaner refugees is expected to rise sharply “towards the second half of summer.”

“We won’t be talking about dozens of arrivals, but hundreds and perhaps thousands,” the official said.

Although the official said he does not have an exact time frame, he said he “would feel confident in saying that … towards the second half of summer, we’ll start to massively scale this up.”

The official said that there is a backlog of over 50,000 refugee applications, and they expect that this number will “continue to rise.”

Trump’s EO accused South Africa of showing “disregard” for the rights of its citizens through “countless government policies designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education, and business, and hateful rhetoric and government actions fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners.” (RELATED: The TRUTH About What’s Happening In South Africa)

The order cut off aid to South Africa and announced that the U.S. will “promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation.”

“Everyone who has been admitted to the United States thus far … has demonstrated a persecution claim,” the official told the Caller. “People have suffered attacks on their farms that were racially motivated.”

The official said nine Afrikaner refugees arrived in Atlanta on Friday morning, following the first wave. Many advocates for refugee settlement have inexplicably changed their tune when the Afrikaners are involved. Episcopal Migration Services, the Episcopal Church’s refugee service, decided to begin winding down its partnership with the federal government when Trump started promoting Afrikaner resettlement. The Church World Service, another Christian group, said it was willing to assist the Afrikaners but claimed they had received preferential treatment over other applicants.