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WASHINGTON – Veteran members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) say the Trump administration has moved from offensive to straight racist with its decision to welcome white South Africans as refugees.

Amid continuing controversy over President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration by people of color, one senior Black House Democrat lamented “the most blatant show of white supremacy in America in the history of the world.”

“It is a slap in the face to every African American and every person in this country who believes in the rule of law,” added Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL), ahead of Congress’ Memorial Day recess.

Afrikaners are the descendants of Dutch colonists who underpinned South Africa’s racist apartheid regime until 1994, when the African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison, became his country’s first Black president.

Now, the Trump administration claims Afrikaner farmers are the victims of government-sponsored genocide — claims Trump spewed live on TV last week in a widely decried Oval Office meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Trump’s conspiratorial claims were rejected by Ramaphosa — and easily debunked.

A picture Trump claimed showed farmers being buried was from the Democratic Republic of Congo. An image Trump claimed showed “burial sites” of “over a thousand of white farmers” showed a memorial to one murdered couple.

One experienced observer, Dorothy Byrnes, a former head of news for the British TV network Channel 4, went viral when she told radio station LBC: “There is no genocide against Afrikaners, that was absolute drivel.”

Byrnes added: “Overwhelmingly, and this is covered, and I have covered it myself, the big problem of violence in South Africa inordinately affects Black people. South Africa has a terrible problem with violent crime, and the chief victims are Black people.”

Regardless, Trump plowed ahead.

“We're deporting thousands of people, and he's bringing in white Afrikaners who he says he's gonna uplift, get health insurance, get found jobs, resettle and housing,” Wilson said.

“I mean, what an insult, right? And also the foundation for his conspiracy theories, saying that there's this genocide happening, that is insane and none of it is true.

“I think that the way that he acted when the president of South Africa came, to try to embarrass … one of our African countries’ heads of state, was just an insult.”

Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver (D-MO), a minister and former CBC chair, called Trump’s meeting with Ramaphosa “embarrassing.”

“He was set up,” Cleaver said of Ramaphosa, who followed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in enduring a White House harangue.

“You know, in some ways we should have known [Trump was] gonna do that when he met with African leaders,” Cleaver said.

“He's divisive in his spirit. And so I guess he can't help himself. I wonder who was orchestrating that stuff. Is it him, or is it Elon Musk?”

Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX mogul, is a Trump donor and adviser and attended the Ramaphosa meeting. A U.S. citizen, Musk was born in South Africa and has advanced claims of genocide against Afrikaners.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) had time for only a short word, as she rushed to a vote.

Trump’s Afrikaner policy was “Elon weirdo stuff,” the progressive phenom told Raw Story.

‘Stephen Miller probably came up with this’

On the other side of the Capitol, Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) told Raw Story Trump’s policy was simply another instance of his “burning our alliances, eroding if not totally compromising trust.”

“As long as he's on top, he’s the bully,” Welch said.

The Afrikaner policy is an example of Trump “changing inherent policies to pick who's going to vote for him,” said Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM.) “Rather than looking at policy, fixing the broken immigration policy and then let us all work towards finding these solutions and working together.”

Luján also said “the initial reaction and response that I've heard from constituents and from colleagues is a negative one. It just feels very overt. It's not a surprise coming from this administration but I would argue it's intentional. Stephen Miller probably came up with this.”

 

White House aide Stephen Miller. REUTERS/Kent Nishimura

Miller is an immigration ultra-hardliner and one of Trump’s closest advisers.

Earlier this month, Miller told reporters “what's happening in South Africa fits the textbook definition of why the refugee program was created. This is persecution based on a protected characteristic, in this case, race. This is race-based persecution.”

Miller claimed “a whole series of government policies specifically targets farmers and the white population in South Africa”, including “land expropriation.”

He added: “You even see government leaders chanting racial epithets and espousing racial violence.”

Miller said such policies and threats were “all very well documented.”

Experts disagree.

“The politicians quoted [as espousing racial violence] were not ANC politicians, one of them was a man who’d been specifically thrown out of the ANC and the other was an opponent of the ANC,” said Byrnes, the British expert.

The first 59 Afrikaner refugees arrived in the U.S. in mid-May. Before that, Miller predicted “a much larger-scale relocation effort, and so those numbers are going to increase.

“It takes a little while to set up a system and processes and procedures to begin a new refugee flow,” Miller said. “But we expect that the pace will increase.”

‘Against the ideals of our nation’

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) has emerged as a leading Democratic voice against Trump, notably through a record-breaking Senate speech in April, when he spent 25 hours highlighting Trump’s threat to the Constitution.

Speaking to Raw Story, Booker said the Afrikaner refugee policy was a dereliction of moral duty.

“Why, at a time of ungodly ethnic cleansing, like in places like Darfur and Sudan, are we not allowing in people that are escaping legitimate threats?” Booker asked. “Why are we making it harder for them to get in?

“So this is, to me, unconscionable. It's against the larger ideals of our nation. It's morally unacceptable.”

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Matt Laslo has covered Congress since 2006, bringing Raw Story readers the personalities behind the politics and policy straight from Capitol Hill. Based in Washington, D.C., Matt has been a long-time contributor to NPR, WIRED, VICE News, The Daily Beast, Rolling Stone, and Playboy.