A foreign national has been arrested for illegally processing applications under President Trump’s controversial program for white South Africans.
South Africa has arrested and deported seven Kenyans who were working illegally at a center that processes refugee claims for the highly controversial U.S. resettlement program, which is open only to white Afrikaners.
The arrests in Johannesburg on Tuesday followed intelligence reports that a Kenyan national had entered the country on a tourist visa and taken a job despite South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs having previously rejected his application for a work visa for the same occupation.
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The seven will be banned from re-entering South Africa for five years.
The operation sparked a new diplomatic spat between Pretoria and Washington, with tensions rising throughout 2025 over US President Donald Trump’s widely rejected claims that white South Africans were facing “genocide” and racial persecution.
The U.S. State Department told CNN that “interference with our country’s refugee assistance efforts is unacceptable,” and that it would demand an immediate explanation.
CNN reported that two U.S. government officials were briefly detained during the raid, but a South African statement said no U.S. officials were arrested.
The Kenyans were working in a processing center run by the white South African-led group American and RSC Africa, a Kenya-based refugee aid organization run by Church World Services. These organizations are handling applications for President Trump’s program, which brought a small number of white South Africans to the United States this year.
South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation said the presence of foreign officials coordinating with undocumented workers “raises serious questions about intentions and diplomatic protocol” and said it had begun formal engagement with both the United States and Kenya.
“If you’re not white, forget it.”
President Trump launched the resettlement program in February through an executive order titled “Addressing South Africa’s Terrible Behavior,” cutting off all U.S. aid and prioritizing Afrikaner refugees who say they face discrimination by the government.
In September, he set a historically low cap of 7,500 refugees for 2026, reserving most slots for white South Africans.
Scott Lucas, a professor of American and international politics at the Clinton Institute at University College Dublin, previously told Al Jazeera that the contrast between Trump’s treatment of white South African refugees and refugees of color from other countries shows a “perverse honesty” about his actions and worldview.
“If you’re white and have connections, you can get in,” Lucas said. “If you’re not white, forget about it.”
The South African government strongly denies the allegations of persecution.
Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola said there was no data to support claims of white persecution, noting that Afrikaners are among the “most economically advantaged” peoples in the country.
Major Afrikaner organizations also rejected Trump’s characterization.
Africa Forum and the Solidarity Movement, which represents around 600,000 Afrikaner families, rejected his application for asylum, saying immigration would “sacrifice the cultural identity of their descendants”.
The Afrikaner enclave of Orania said: “Afrikaners do not want to become refugees. We love our homeland and are committed to it.”
Deterioration of relations
President Trump has repeatedly presented false evidence to support his claims, including an orchestrated and televised ambush on South African President Cyril Ramaphosa during a visit to the White House.
In May, President Trump aired images later confirmed to be from the Democratic Republic of Congo and footage of a makeshift memorial that Trump falsely claimed showed mass graves.
Relations between the two countries have sharply deteriorated since the beginning of this year.
President Trump expelled South Africa’s ambassador in March, boycotted the G20 summit in Johannesburg in November, and last month excluded South Africa from participating in the Miami G20 in 2026, calling it “a country unworthy of membership anywhere” in a social media post.
Just a day before the arrest, South Africa denounced its exclusion from the G20 as an “insult to multilateralism”.
