Trump defends taking South African refugees in meeting with nation's president

President Donald Trump on Wednesday defended his administration's welcome of South African refugees during a meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Trump addressed the matter when fielding a question from NBC News about why he permitted their entry while moving deport asylees from other nations. 

"We've had tremendous complaints about Africa, but other countries too, from people," he said. "They say there's a lot of bad things going on in Africa, and that's what we're going to be discussing today. When you say, we don't take others, all you have to do is take a look at the southern border. We let 21 million people come through our border, totally unchecked, totally unvetted."

But we do have a lot of people are very concerned with regard to South Africa, and that's really the purpose of the meeting, and we'll see how that turns out," he added. "But we have many people that feel they're being persecuted, and they're coming to the United States. So we take from many, many locations, if we feel this persecution or genocide going on."

White South Africans have lived in the territory since the 17th Century. Many are of Dutch heritage and known as "Boers" and "Afrikaners", an ethnic group that controls a large swathe of the nation's farmland. South African politicians have attempted to pass legislation that would allow the government to confiscate those farms without remuneration.

Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) chief Elon Musk, a native South African, has been an outspoken critic of the policy and an advocate for accepting Afrikaners to the U.S. A similar land appropriation move occurred in Zimbabwe following the conclusion of the Rhodesian Bush War.