Maine immigration officials have joined a chorus of advocates across the country expressing confusion and frustration over this week’s arrival of dozens of white South African refugees.
The Trump administration – which instituted a broad freeze on refugee resettlement and foreign aid in January – has argued that Afrikaners, South Africa’s white ethnic minority that established and enforced apartheid, are now facing discrimination in the post-apartheid era. But their admission to the U.S. via a government-funded charter flight on Monday has left many questioning why refugees fleeing violence elsewhere seem to have been forgotten.
“Some of them were ready to come,” said Inza Ouattara, a state refugee coordinator with Catholic Charities Maine in Portland. “Their ticket was booked, they were rushing to get here before Jan. 20th.”
Catholic Charities is one of three agencies in the state that assist refugees – immigrants who flee their home countries for fear of persecution and cannot safely return. Refugees are typically outside the U.S. when they are screened and accepted for resettlement, whereas asylum seekers apply when they are at a U.S. port of entry or in the country already.
At the start of this year, the agency planned to resettle around 1,300 refugees. But that changed in January, when the Trump administration suspended refugee admissions nationwide. Funding to Catholic Charities was cut, and Ouattara said new arrivals slowed to a trickle.
“We started strong and hopeful and optimistic about the numbers and all the infrastructure in place,” he said. “But from January, everything stopped.”
In 2023, Maine resettled an average of 35 refugees per month. That number rose to roughly 57 per month in 2024, according to Catholic Charities. But since President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, that rate has dropped sharply to 11 refugees per month. And in March and April, Ouattara said, all refugees resettled in Maine arrived from elsewhere in the U.S., not directly from their countries of origin.
Maine has historically welcomed refugees from more than 30 countries. In the past two years, the largest groups have arrived from Afghanistan, Syria and the Democratic Republic of Congo, with most settling in Lewiston, followed by Portland. None have been Afrikaners, who were not classified as refugees until February.
In 2018, during his first term, President Trump directed his secretary of state to investigate reports that the South African government was seizing land from white farmers. His rhetoric drew criticism from experts, who noted that while white South Africans make up just 7% of the population, they still control roughly 70% of the country’s commercial farmland.
“It’s a genocide that’s taking place that you people don’t want to write about,” Trump said Monday during a press conference. “They happen to be white, but whether they’re white or Black makes no difference to me, but white farmers are being brutally killed, and their land is being confiscated in South Africa.”
His use of the word “genocide,” one that both South African officials and the country’s largest farmers’ union have repeatedly denied, affirmed some white South Africans who claim they have been discriminated against by the Black-led government. But Trump’s comments also angered advocates and scholars, who fear the rhetoric will encourage prejudice in the U.S.
“Afrikaners in South Africa are simply being used to pander and to foment racist opinion in this country,” said Diana Wylie, a professor of southern and North African history at Boston University. “It’s all about Trump and his perceived power base.”
Wylie said the Trump administration is using the Afrikaners’ arrival to deflect attention from the ongoing 18-month war between Israel and Hamas, a conflict that Palestinian health officials say has killed more than 50,000 people. In doing so, she said, the arrival of the 59 white South Africans risks downplaying the realities faced by civilians in places like Gaza.
“There are people who are fleeing gang warfare in Haiti, or people who are fleeing Iraq and Syria. Those are real refugees,” she said. “But to call people who have not suffered in that way (refugees) is actually demeaning the word.”
Others also question the refugee designation of the Afrikaners, including the Episcopal Church, which ended its decades-long refugee resettlement agreement with the federal government on the same day the white South Africans touched down in Virginia. In a letter to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, which the church’s resettlement ministry participated in for decades, presiding Bishop Sean Rowe cited a “steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation” as reason for the decision.
The Episcopal Church is one of 10 national agencies that partner with the federal government to resettle refugees, playing a key role in helping them find housing, employment and community support. On Friday, another member of that network, Church World Service, voiced concern over admitting Afrikaners as refugees but said in a statement it would continue to serve all eligible refugees, including Afrikaners.

Denying services to refugees of any kind is worrying to Mufalo Chitam, executive director of the Portland-based Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition. Chitam said the agency will continue to support all people seeking refuge, regardless of race. While aware of the debate surrounding the Afrikaners, Chitam is more focused on the broader pause in refugee resettlement and hopes that policies will remain inclusive once the ban is lifted.
“When it’s restarted, it should restart for everyone,” said Chitam. “It doesn’t create safe communities when you have selective policies. It ends up pitting groups against each other.”
Fowsia Musse, executive director of Maine Community Integration, said that the organization will continue to offer services to every immigrant. As someone who arrived in the United States seeking safety and opportunity, Musse said the “promise” of America lies in acceptance.
“Welcoming South African refugees, like so many others who have arrived before them, is a reflection of that promise,” Musse said in an email. “We are all part of the fabric of this country, and every community benefits when we extend compassion and humanity to those starting over.”
Despite the work of Maine’s resettlement agencies and advocacy groups, many locals still have relatives waiting in refugee camps, and they wonder why their loved ones appear to matter less than the Afrikaners.
In January, 104 refugees arrived in Maine, the state’s highest single-month increase since data was made available in 2022, according to Catholic Charities. Ouattara said many were set to follow, part of a group of over 10,000 refugees whose flights were abruptly canceled by the State Department.
“Families do not understand why their brother, sister, husband or kids were about to come here in February, and all of a sudden being told that refugees are not coming again,” he said. “But yesterday, they hear that refugees are coming from South Africa.”
The South Africans were processed in just three months, a pace Ouattara said is far faster than any of the thousands of refugees he’s helped resettle through Catholic Charities of Maine. Most, he said, spend one to three years in refugee camps before arriving in the state.
Still, if an Afrikaner walked into Catholic Charities, Ouattara said, he would serve them. But he also worries that resentment over their arrival may linger in the community.
“It’s going to be seen as unfair to one group and not to others,” he said. “It’s going to have some negative impacts or negative feelings in the communities.”
Chitam shared the same concern, noting that legal actions, even at the municipal level, can erode trust in policymakers. When communities lose faith in the system and immigrants are too afraid to seek help, the consequences can be deadly, she said.
“The federal government makes policy, but settling happens by neighbors,” she said. “If your neighbor is feeling some sense of animosity, then that makes it harder for you to settle.”