Other refugees in the dark and the US welcoming white South Africans

A man slept outside in a parking garage at night in Kenya with his wife and son in the baby in January, consumed by confusion and disbelief.

The family, refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), had expected a flight to the US for resettlement in just a few hours.

But after the US President Donald Trump suspended the American refugee program only two days before the planned departure of the family, the man was told that their flight to America was abruptly canceled than 24 hours before the start.

“I had nothing else,” the man, who asked to use the name Pacito to protect his identity, to the BBC.

He had already moved his family from their house, sold his furniture and most of their possessions and prepared for a new life in America. They remain in Kenya, a safer prospect than the DRC, where they fled a conflict.

They only represent three of the approximately 120,000 refugees who were conditionally approved to enter the US, but who are now waiting in the dark due to the refugee break.

Trump’s movement meant a major change in the approach followed by successive American leaders. Under former President Joe Biden, more than 100,000 refugees came to the US in 2024 – the highest annual figure in almost three decades.

Since he entered in January, Trump has quickly moved to make his campaign blade of an “America First” agenda that has limited dramatic routes with which migrants can come to the US.

The effort also includes an ambitious deportation program under which people have been deported to a notorious mega prison in El Salvador against the orders of a judge, as well as the withdrawal of visa of more than a thousand university students, and offering illegal immigrants a sum of $ 1,000 for “self-remediation”.

The White House has defended its actions by suggesting that many of those forced from the country are violent criminals or threaten the interests of America.

But exceptions to the policy have been made for a select number.

The president signed an executive order in February that the refugee path opened exclusively for Afrikaners – white South Africans whom he claimed were the victim of “racial discrimination”.

A plane with 59 of them landed earlier this month at an airport just outside Washington DC, in a ceremonious greeting that included the deputy State Secretary.

“It’s not fair,” Pacito noted. “There are 120,000 refugees who have experienced the entire process, the screening, safety, the medical screening. We have waited for years, but now these (Afrikaners) are just being processed in about three months.”

Pacito has committed the situation. Because he has sold all the equipment he needed to work in his field of music production, he has difficulty finding strange jobs in recent months to make money for his family. “It’s a bit difficult,” he said.

Trump has further justified his decision to accept Afrikaners as refugees in the US, because he says that they are confronted with “a genocide” – a message that was repeated by Elon Musk, who were born in South Africa.

Such claims have been scattered for years, although his widely discredited and were refused by South Africa.

However, the call has accepted new animus-especially among right-wing groups in the US since in January in South Africa, a law was adopted that enabled the government to grab land of white landowners “when it is just and just and in the public interest”. The law after apartheid was intended to tackle frustrations around the disproportionate land ownership of South Africa; The white population of the country is around 7%, but have around 72% of the agricultural land.

Although the South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has said that no country was taken under the new law, days after it was adopted, Trump ordered the US to freeze hundreds of millions of dollars to support the country. A diplomatic feud followed.

The fraying relationship was exposed on Wednesday during a tense white house meeting between the couple. Trump hindered Ramaphosa on live TV with claims of white “persecution” – A statement of Ramaphosa is explicitly rejected.

Analysts have described the broader foreign policy of Trump’s second term as isolationist, with countless steps to reduce foreign help and to disrupt the US from foreign conflicts, in addition to reducing immigration.

Trump has also terminated dozens of billions of dollars in global auxiliary contracts -including funds that supported life -saving HIV/AIDS programs in South Africa. He has justified the cutbacks by saying that his team has identified fraud within the help of the help.

The movements appear in stark contrast to the decision of the White House to speed up the arrival of white South Africans – a fact that has been criticized by interest groups of refugees.

“Any case of protection must be based on credible proof of prosecution, and the central question here is about fairness and equal treatment under the law,” Timothy Young of the non-profit organization told Global Refuge to the BBC.

“So if a group has access to humanitarian paths, Afghan allies must too, religious minorities and the thousands of other families who are confronted with serious threats and who meet the legal criteria for refugee status,” Mr Young said.

Under its other movements, the Trump government has chosen not to renew the temporary protected status for Afghans in the US and to say that “Afghanistan has had an improved safety situation” and a “stabilizing economy”. They are now confronted with deportation.

South Africa does not release any figures of crime on the basis of race, but the last figures revealed that 6,953 people were killed in the country between October and December 2024.

Of these, 12 were killed at farm attacks. Of the 12, one was a farmer, mostly white, while five farm residents were and four employees, who would probably have been black.

In the meantime, thousands of citizens in the DRC have been killed in recent years by armed militias and almost 100,000 more displaced, according to UN figures.

Pacito fled the DRC on foot in 2016 and remembered “Guns everywhere I looked” at the time “and” no peace “. He said that family members of his wife were murdered.

Among the others who see the US as an increasingly unlikely place to resquare as refugees, the Hammad family, who comes from Gaza but now living in Egypt.

“After what happened to Trump, I think it will be impossible,” Amjad Hammad told the BBC.

He and his family had requested the Green Card lottery of the US in 2024, but discovered in May that they had been denied.

He expressed confusion about Trump’s concern about the plight situation of white South Africans above other groups.

“What are the Palestinians for, if the people in South Africa are confronted with a genocide?” he asked.

More than 53,000 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023, when Israel launched a campaign to destroy Hamas – the Palestinian armed group that launched a cross -border attack on South Israël, in which around 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were hostages.

The confusion expressed by Mr Hammad is similar to the views of Pacito, whose hope for resettlement in the US was interrupted in January.

Since then he has been effectively left homeless in Nairobi, who drives from place to where someone will accept him and his family for a few days.

“Sometimes we get food. Sometimes not,” he said. “We had a bad time.”

The policy changes on the American side give him little hope that Trump will be accepted by Trump, but the alternative to go back about Africa to his home country is unthinkable. “I can’t go back,” he said.