When the welcoming ceremony ended, Trump officials drove in a black SUV, and yesterday afternoon, a dozen more arriving South African refugees entered the parking lot of a private terminal at Washington Dulles International Airport, still carrying the small paper flags they were handed over. Now it's time to smoke.
Will Hartzenberg, a tall 44-year-old farmer from the northern Limpopo area of the country, is heading to Idaho with his family to start a new life. "A sigh of relief," he told me when asked about his feelings. "We're really relieved."
Hazenberg said his wife Carmen laughed at him for fear of whether they could safely leave their kids in the building when they walked out to smoke. He believes he needs to learn to put down his guard. "This is not South Africa, you have to take your kids wherever you go," he said.
A US official came over and rushed back to the terminal. They smoke faster. He told me as he walked that he was shot dead in a 1993 attack on the family farm. They survived, but he said he did not see the future of his children in South Africa, or at least not a thriving person.
The country's white minority - the layoffs of British colonists and the Afrikaans from the Netherlands and other European countries - once ruled South Africa through a discriminatory system of apartheid, limiting the country's majority black population in the slums. In the thirty years of the failure of the system, the plight of white South Africans has become the cause of Serapur among white nationalist groups. U.S. President Donald Trump said they were victims of racial discrimination and genocide, which shows that the South African government calls it "completely wrong."
Hartzenberg and his family will be relocated to a 92.5% white state. When he was studying the landscape in Idaho online, he loved what he saw: "We came from a farm surrounded by mountains. So when I googled to see where we were going, I was so excited."
Hartzenberg's combination of chaos, relief and optimism has been shared by generations of refugees who have stepped into the United States for the first time. Few people like the kind of support South Africans get from the Trump administration, which has almost frozen refugee enrollment in other countries and cut resettlement funds. This stranded at least 12,000 refugees, many of whom were in conflict areas, who were booked flights to the United States after being widely reviewed and approved for resettlement - only to learn that they are no longer welcome in the United States.
Yesterday, a resettlement agency associated with the Bishop's Church said that this would not help the Afrikaans required by its federal grants. Bishop Mark Rowe, the church’s bishop, wrote to church members, saying he was ending his four-year historic partnership with the government. The bishop said Trump's resettlement plan crossed the moral route of the church, which is part of the Global Anglican Church, whose leaders include the late Archbishop of South Africa, Desmond Tutu.
"It's a pain to watch a group of refugees selected in extremely unusual ways than many others who have been waiting for years in refugee camps or dangerous conditions to receive preferential treatment," Rowe wrote. They include "the brave men who work with our military in Iraq and Afghanistan and are now at risk at home because of their service to our country."
The Trump administration said yesterday that it would end temporary immigration protections for some Afghans in the United States on July 12, with about 9,000 immigrants at risk of being deported back to Taliban-controlled countries.
The White House welcomes white refugees as the Trump administration’s deportation campaign aims to deport millions of immigrants in the United States. Trump recently portrayed the recent wave of immigration as an existential threat to the United States "poisoning the country's blood."
Hartzenberg, his family and other refugees were warmly welcomed after landing in Northern Virginia around noon. Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Troy Edgar and Secretary of State Christopher Landau greeted them, who linked their lives to those of newcomers. Landau said his father fled the Nazi takeover in Europe and found security and freedom in the United States. Edgar told the group that his wife, an Iranian Christian, fled persecution in his own homeland.
"I think many of you are farmers, right?" Lan Dao said. "When you have good seeds, you can put them in foreign soil and they will bloom. They will bloom. We are happy to welcome you to our country and we think you will bloom."
Edgar told South Africans that they will receive personal contact information from officials, a gesture that seems to emphasize the special status of new immigrants.
Refugees fall into a unique category among the U.S. immigrant groups and are selected because they face persecution or harm due to their race, religion, nationality, political view or race, religion, nationality, political view or membership in a particular social group. Over the past few years, the United States welcomed Vietnam to flee communist takeover, Soviet immigrants and Christians from Africa and the Middle East. Refugees obey the U.S. review and screening process and then endure the waiting that could be extended for years. They arrive with full legal protection and citizenship and receive assistance from resettlement organizations, which are often affiliated with faith groups and have long enjoyed bipartisan political support.
South Africans were handled by the Trump administration in weeks. BBC reporters asked why they were quickly sailing into the United States when Afghan applicants or other admissions in the war zone were frozen, and Landau said Trump made an exception based on the horrible situation in South Africa. He and Edgar asked only two questions in a strictly controlled news event (I am not allowed to attend) without talking to the reporter outside.
South Africa is one of the highest crime rates in the world, and land conflicts have exacerbated violence in rural areas. Crime data show that dozens of white farmers are killed every year, but their deaths account for less than 1% of homicides in the country. "Farmers are being killed," Trump told reporters at the White House yesterday. "They happen to be white. But both white and black people have no effect on me; but white farmers are brutally killed and their land is confiscated in South Africa."
During his first term, Trump cut the lowest number of refugees since the 1980 Refugee Act. After he continued his post this year, he went further and issued an executive order that suspended refugee enrollment. But within a few weeks, he was exceptional. White South African farmers protested heavily against the law passed in January that allowed courts not to compensate the land in some cases. South African officials said the goal was to address the deadly inequality that had been put into effect during decades of apartheid. According to the South African government land audit, although whites make up about 7% of South Africa's population, they own about 75% of the farmland.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on social media yesterday: "The South African government has treated these people extremely well - threatening to steal their private land and suffer from bad racial discrimination."
Last year, the Biden administration relocated about 100,000 people. No one comes from South Africa. According to U.S. officials, about 8,000 South Africans now say they are interested in applying for U.S. resettlement.
US visa statistics show that South Africans already have more people working as temporary agricultural workers, often able to operate machinery or perform other skilled tasks. U.S. data shows that more than 15,000 South Africans had temporary visas for agricultural labor last year.
Hartzenberg told me that his family grew vegetables on their farm in South Africa. He said he hopes to return to farming in Idaho, but he is not sure what work he can do. The case worker assigned to his family has not told him yet. The last time he smoked, he was busy getting back to the hangar to collect the kids and boarding a bus with the others.