How Trump Turned America’s Refugee Program Into a Pathway for White People

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An NAACP flyer campaigning for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, but was filibustered to defeat in the Senate. Dyer, the NAACP, and freedom fighters around the country, like Flossie Baily, struggled for years to get the Dyer and other anti-lynching bills passed, to no avail. Today there is still no U.S. law specifically against lynching. In 2005, eighty of the 100 U.S. Senators voted for a resolution to apologize to victims' families and the country for their failure to outlaw lynching. Courtesy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

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Claude, age 23, just months before his 1930 murder. Courtesy of Faith Deeter.

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June 24, 2026

Zolan Kannon-Young and Hamed Aleaziz, The New York Times

A white South African, Charl Kleinhaus secured refugee status and moved with his family to the United States in a matter of months. Credit…Terry Ratzlaff for The New York Times

A white South African, Mr. Kleinhaus said the laws meant to empower Black people after the demise of the racist apartheid system had hurt his mining business. Violence in the country — a scourge affecting everyone, regardless of race — had become too much.

So Mr. Kleinhaus considered his options.

Some of his fellow Afrikaners, the ethnic minority that ruled during apartheid, had moved to Germany, but the language barrier was not ideal. He thought about Australia, but decided that moving his family thousands of miles from home would be too hard.

Then, in February of last year, Mr. Kleinhaus received what he described as “a message from above.” President Trump had suspended refugee admissions to the United States, but he made an exception for people like Mr. Kleinhaus: white Afrikaners who claim they are victims of racial persecution in South Africa.

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