Ilhan Omar Says Trump Wants Refugee Resettlement 'Only For White People'

WASHINGTON — Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) on Tuesday blasted President Donald Trump’s recent announcement that he would allow white South Africans to resettle in the U.S. as refugees.

Trump halted all refugee resettlement in the U.S. in one of his first actions as president last month, then on Friday announced an exception for Afrikaners, the white descendants of mostly Dutch colonial settlers in South Africa, who Trump claims now face race-based persecution.

“I think making our refugee resettlement system into one that is discriminatory obviously is problematic. It’s currently halted, and he wants to make an exception only for white people — that just is plainly wrong and ridiculous,” Omar told HuffPost.

The country of South Africa was ruled by an Afrikaner-led apartheid regime that enforced strict segregation against its Black population until 1994. White South Africans are a minority group in the country and still generally better off than Black South Africans, owning disproportionate amounts of farmland and earning higher wages.

The White House cut all aid to the country on Friday, on the grounds that South Africa had taken “aggressive actions” toward the U.S. and its allies, such as by accusing Israel of genocide, and claiming that a recently-enacted law would allow the South African government to seize land from its white citizens.

Trump’s order said “the United States shall promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation.”

Trump’s criticism of South Africa seemed at least partly to reflect the views of Elon Musk, the South African-born tech billionaire who bankrolled Trump’s campaign and now serves as an advisor in his administration.

Omar, herself a refugee from Somalia who became a naturalized U.S. citizen at 17, suggested Musk had a hand in the new policy.

“I don’t think people who facilitated apartheid should be looked at as the ones that are being oppressed. But Elon Musk is getting his money’s worth,” she said.

Prominent groups that support Afrikaners in South Africa said that despite their opposition to the new land expropriation law, they had no interest in leaving the country to take advantage of Trump’s resettlement offer. “We have to state categorically: We don’t want to move elsewhere,” the leader of one such group said at a press conference on Saturday.

Officials in the South African government deny that its white residents face arbitrary land seizures or other arbitrary deprivations.

“It is ironic that the executive order makes provision for refugee status in the U.S. for a group in South Africa that remains amongst the most economically privileged,” the South African Foreign Ministry said.

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