By Ted Hesson and Humeyra Pamuk
WASHINGTON, Jan 7 (Reuters) – U.S. and South African officials reached an agreement during a closed-door meeting in late December to allow the U.S. to continue its controversial effort to bring white South Africans to the U.S. as refugees, an internal meeting summary reviewed by Reuters showed.
The meeting came after President Donald Trump’s signature refugee program was disrupted weeks earlier when South African authorities in an extraordinary move raided a U.S. refugee processing site in Johannesburg, arresting contractors and sparking backlash from Washington.
At the December 23 meeting, the top U.S. diplomat in South Africa, charge d’affaires Marc Dillard, received assurances from Pretoria that South Africa would not interfere with Trump’s program, according to the meeting summary, which was signed by Dillard and sent to various U.S. agencies.
“We may not agree with the classification of certain South Africans as facing possible genocide, but their right to move to a destination of their choice is guaranteed and the government of South Africa won’t interfere,” the summary quoted Thabo Thage, one of the South African officials in the meeting, as saying.
At the same time, South African officials did not fully commit to investigating how a U.S. refugee officer’s passport image leaked before being posted online and offered only a “tepid” response to Washington’s push to get to the bottom of what happened, according to the meeting summary, which has not been previously reported.
Trump froze U.S. refugee admissions from around the world when he returned to the White House as part of his broader immigration crackdown. But weeks later, he launched an effort to bring white South Africans of Afrikaner ethnicity to the U.S. as refugees, claiming they were victims of race-based persecution in majority-Black South Africa. The South African government has emphatically rejected the allegations, which echoed far-right conspiracy theories.
During a May meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Trump confronted his counterpart with false claims about white genocide in the country. Ties between the two countries have further soured after Washington banned South Africa from the G20 meetings that it will host later this year.
The tensions peaked in mid-December when South African authorities raided a site where U.S. refugee staff and contractors were working on refugee cases.
The raid resulted in the arrest of seven Kenyans working as contractors for a U.S.-based refugee group over allegations they were violating the terms of their visas, as well as the brief detention of two U.S. refugee officers.
The U.S. State Department said that despite the “unacceptable events” in December, its operations remained unhindered. The department said more Afrikaners arrived in the U.S. as refugees in December than any previous month and that higher numbers were expected in January.
South Africa’s foreign ministry, the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, rejected any suggestion that its officials were negotiating with the U.S. regarding the refugee program.
“Our position on the so-called ‘refugee protection’ for South African citizens is unchanged: it is based on a false premise that lacks empirical evidence and has been rejected by South Africans of all backgrounds,” the ministry said in a statement.
PRIVATE DIPLOMACY AFTER PUBLIC CLASHES
The summary, emailed to U.S. State Department refugee program staff on Monday and labeled “sensitive,” suggests the two nations are quietly seeking a more collaborative approach following tense relations since Trump took office nearly a year ago.
During a two-hour meeting late at night on December 23, South African officials appeared to seek calm rather than confrontation, the U.S. summary said. Dillard met with two high-ranking South African diplomats, Deputy Minister Alvin Botes and Acting Chief Director for North America Thabo Thage, it said.
“Botes and Thage appear to have entered the meeting with the aim of de‑escalating the recent rise in tensions and improving communications with U.S. counterparts to avoid ‘drama’ and the unnecessary airing of public grievances in the future,” the summary read.
South Africa’s foreign ministry said the arrest of U.S. refugee program contractors was “a law enforcement matter, not a diplomatic signal” and that the U.S. effort could proceed if it followed South African law.
“To construe adherence to the rule of law as a ‘secret endorsement’ of a specific foreign policy program is a deliberate misinterpretation,” the ministry said.
While the South African officials defended the arrests of Kenyan contractors as “immigration enforcement,” they also said the country would not seek to derail Trump’s effort to bring white South Africans to the U.S.
They repeatedly assured the charge d’affaires “that there had been no change in policy and South Africa would not interfere with the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program,” the summary said.
Botes and Thage recommended the U.S. increase American staff and contract out to South Africans rather than Kenyans to avoid future issues, the summary said.
The South African officials offered a “tepid pledge” to investigate the leak of a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services refugee officer’s passport following the raid, an incident that the U.S. Embassy called “an unacceptable form of harassment” at the time, the summary said.
Thage “downplayed the USCIS incident,” questioning the link between the passport leak and the South African government, according to the summary.
While Thage shifted the blame to a blogger who posted the image to X, Botes – the second-highest-ranking official in South Africa’s foreign ministry – called for more scrutiny, it said.
“Botes acknowledged the need to find out what happened, gave Thage a look that questioned why he would object to an investigation, and tasked Thage with following up on the issue,” the summary said.
TRUMP FOCUS ON AFRIKANERS
Dillard became charge d’affaires in Pretoria when the former top official, David Greene, departed in November. Greene had asked in a July cable to Washington whether non-whites could qualify for the refugee program, leading the top Trump appointee at the time to say the program was only for whites, Reuters reported at the time.
Trump set the refugee admissions target for fiscal year 2026 at 7,500 in October, the lowest level on record, with a focus on Afrikaners.
About 1,000 have entered since the first arrivals in May, two people familiar with the matter said.
(Reporting by Ted Hesson and Humeyra Pamuk in Washington; Additional reporting by Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo in Johannesburg; Editing by Sally Buzbee and Matthew Lewis)
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