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Straits Times
4 days ago
- Politics
- Straits Times
US diplomats asked if non-whites qualify for Trump refugee program for South Africans
FILE PHOTO: The first group of white South African refugees step from a \"people mover\" upon arrival at Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Virginia, U.S., May 12, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo WASHINGTON - In early July, the top official at the U.S. embassy in South Africa reached out to Washington asking for clarification on a contentious U.S. policy: could non-whites apply for a refugee program geared toward white South Africans if they met other requirements? President Donald Trump's February executive order establishing the program specified that it was for "Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination," referring to an ethnic group descended mostly from Dutch settlers. In a diplomatic cable sent July 8, embassy Charge d'Affairs David Greene asked whether the embassy could process claims from other minority groups claiming race-based discrimination such as "coloured" South Africans who speak Afrikaans. In South Africa the term coloured refers to mixed-raced people, a classification created by the apartheid regime still in use today. The answer came back days later in an email from Spencer Chretien, the highest-ranking official in the State Department's refugee and migration bureau, saying the program is intended for white people. Reuters was unable to independently verify the precise language in the email which was described to the news agency by three sources familiar with its contents. The State Department, responding to a request for comment on July 18, did not specifically comment on the email or the cable but described the scope of the policy as wider than the guidance in Chretien's email. The department said U.S. policy is to consider both Afrikaners and other racial minorities for resettlement, echoing guidance posted on its website in May saying that applicants "must be of Afrikaner ethnicity or be a member of a racial minority in South Africa." Chretien declined to comment through a State Department spokesperson. Greene did not respond to Reuters requests for comment. The internal back-and-forth between the embassy and the State Department - which hasn't been previously reported - illustrates the confusion in how to implement a policy designed to help white Afrikaners in a racially diverse country that includes mixed-race people who speak Afrikaans, as well as whites who speak English. So far the State Department has resettled 88 South Africans under the program, including the initial group of 59 who arrived in May. Another 15 are expected to arrive by the end of August, one of the sources said. Trump, a Republican who recaptured the White House pledging a wide-ranging immigration crackdown, placed an indefinite freeze on refugee admissions from around the world after taking office, saying the U.S. would only admit refugees who "can fully and appropriately assimilate." Weeks later, he issued an executive order that called for the U.S. to resettle Afrikaners, describing them as victims of "violence against racially disfavored landowners," allegations that echoed far-right claims but which have been contested by South Africa's government. Since the executive order, U.S. diplomats working to implement the program have been deliberating internally about which racial groups could be considered eligible, one of the sources said. In the July 8 cable, Greene laid out a summary of the different ethnic and racial groups in the country before seeking guidance on eligibility. In addition to Afrikaners and mixed-race South Africans, Greene mentioned indigenous South Africans known as the Khoisan people. He said that members of the Jewish community had also expressed interest, but that in South Africa they are considered a religious minority and not a racial group. "In the absence of other guidance, [the U.S. embassy] intends to give consideration to well-founded claims of persecution based on race for other racial minorities," Greene wrote. At least one family identified as coloured has already traveled to the U.S. as refugees, two people familiar with the matter said. The cable forced the administration to clarify its position on whether the policy is for whites only, and if it does include other aggrieved minorities, who would qualify, two of the people familiar with the matter said. Chretien, a conservative who wrote op-eds promoting the Heritage Foundation's "Project 2025" plan to overhaul the federal government, is the senior official at the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. During the apartheid era, which ended with the first democratic elections in 1994, South Africa maintained a racially segregated society with separate schools, neighborhoods and public facilities for people classified as Black, coloured, white or Asian. Blacks make up 81% of South Africa's population, according to 2022 census data. Coloured South Africans make up 8%, and Indians 3%. Afrikaners and other white South Africans constitute 7% of the population but own three-quarters of the privately held land in the country. When asked about the program in May, Trump said he was not giving Afrikaners preferential treatment because they are white. "They happen to be white, but whether they are white or Black makes no difference to me," he said. In response to a request for comment, a White House official said the administration's policy reflected Trump's executive order. 'We will prioritize refugee admissions for South African citizens, including Afrikaners and other racial minorities in South Africa, who have been targeted by the discriminatory laws of the South African government," the official said. The assertion that minority white South Africans face discrimination from the Black majority has spread in far-right circles for years and been echoed by white South African-born Elon Musk, a U.S. citizen who served as a top White House aide during the first four months of Trump's administration. The South African government has rejected the allegations of persecution and a "white genocide." There is no evidence to back up claims of widespread, race-based attacks in the country. During a combative Oval Office meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in May, Trump showed a printed image of a Reuters video taken in the Democratic Republic of Congo as part of what he falsely presented as evidence of mass killings of white South Africans. The South African Chamber of Commerce said earlier this year that 67,000 people were interested in the program. REUTERS
19-07-2025
- Politics
Trump's pace of early travel largely mirrors Biden's, but with more sports events and golf
WASHINGTON -- Moving at the 'speed of Trump' is one of the White House's favorite phrases, meant to convey the administration's attempts to bring big changes to government at breakneck speed. But when it comes to presidential travel, Donald Trump's pace in the opening months of his second term is comparable to Joe Biden's. At his six-month mark in office through Saturday, Trump had made 49 trips to 14 states and seven foreign countries, with a heavy focus on weekend golf trips and sporting events. That's not far off from Biden, who made 45 trips to 17 states and three foreign countries in his first six months in 2021, which overlapped with the COVID-19 pandemic. The Democrat made lots of weekend trips home to Delaware, where he went to church and usually did not golf. He also had more political and official trips than did his Republican successor. Trump's second-term travel is also less prolific than his first so far, at least in terms of visiting different parts of the United States. In 2017, he made 48 trips to 21 states and eight foreign countries between Jan. 20 and July 20. The White House has said Trump is most effective while in the Oval Office, working the phones, signing executive orders and meeting with foreign leaders and U.S. elected officials. It says Trump has met with 25 foreign leaders at the White House, including multiple visits by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, and signed 165 executive orders while holding six Cabinet meetings — totals that far outpace Biden's. White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a statement that Trump's 'travel reflects his America First agenda -– he is meeting the American people where they are and representing their best interests.' The president, Rogers said, 'will continue working around the clock to deliver the best deals for the American people from the Oval Office, throughout the country, and around the world.' A look at where Trump has gone so far: When Trump hits the road, it's most often to his properties for weekend trips built around golf in Palm Beach, Florida; Bedminster, New Jersey; or Sterling, Virginia, near Washington's Dulles International Airport and close enough to motorcade from the White House. The president has logged 14 Florida trips, 13 to Virginia and eight to New Jersey. After summer arrived, he has favored Bedminster or day trips to Sterling over steamy Mar-a-Lago in Florida. Biden headed to his home in Wilmington, Delaware, many weekends early in his term. He sometimes went to a golf club, but attended Mass nearly every weekend. Biden also traveled often to showcase policy achievements or to promote his initiatives, such as his visit to Smith Flooring in Chester, Pennsylvania, a small business he described as benefiting from the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package. Much of Trump's non-golf domestic travel has been built around sporting events. The president went to the Super Bowl in New Orleans and to Florida for the Daytona 500. He attended UFC fights in Miami and Newark, New Jersey, the NCAA wrestling championships in Philadelphia and the FIFA Club World Cup final in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Trump has held only three major political rallies since returning to the White House. He marked his first 100 days in office in suburban Detroit, went to Pittsburgh to trumpet an agreement between U.S. Steel and Japan's Nippon Steel and to Des Moines, Iowa, to kick off the start of America's 250th birthday celebration. The president gave an economy-focused speech at a Las Vegas casino during his second term's opening weekend, and was in to Oxon Hill, Maryland, just outside Washington, to address the Conservative Political Action Conference in February. In addition to policy-focused travel, Biden did more early political trips. He participated in a CNN town hall in Wisconsin, marked the 11th anniversary of the Obama administration's signature health care law in Columbus, Ohio, and spotlighted his first 100 days in office by addressing a socially distanced, drive-in rally in Atlanta. Trump gave more commencement addresses, speaking at the University of Alabama and the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York. Biden spoke at the Coast Guard commencement in Connecticut in his opening months of his term, when COVID-19 limited many such ceremonies. One area where Trump has outpaced Biden is on travel overseas. He was to Rome for Pope Francis' funeral and had a swing through Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, before going to Canada for the meeting of the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations and a NATO summit in the Netherlands. Biden did not travel overseas in 2021 until the G7 that June, when he went to the United Kingdom, Belgium and Switzerland, again at a time when the pandemic was raging. Trump's second term started out with visits to western North Carolina and Southern California, both hit by natural disasters that occurred while Biden was president. Trump also visited Texas after recent devastating floods. But Trump did not tour parts of Missouri and Kentucky that were ravaged by tornadoes. He did not travel to areas hit by strong storms that sparked deadly flooding from other parts of Texas and Oklahoma to Indiana and Pennsylvania. He did not see the widespread aftermath of spring tornadoes, including in Mississippi and Arkansas. Biden made a February 2021 trip to tour storm damage in Houston. He did not travel to all natural disaster sites during his first six months, either, but went to Florida after a building collapse in Surfside killed 98 people. When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu became the first foreign leader to visit the White House during Trump's second term in early February, the president proclaimed, 'I love Israel. I will visit there. And I'll visit Gaza.' His Middle East swing in May omitted both places. Trump also suggested that his government-slashing guru Elon Musk would be checking out Fort Knox in Kentucky to ensure that U.S. gold reserves were still there, and the president said he might join him. With Musk having left the Trump administration and engaging in a nasty public feud with Trump, that now seems highly unlikely. The president said recently he would like to visit Africa 'at some point." He was less committal about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's invitation to visit a September summit of countries known as the Quad, made up of the U.S., India, Japan and Australia. Trump is heading to Scotland next week and will visit two areas where he has golf properties. He will be in England for an official visit in the fall. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, while at the White House in February, presented Trump with a letter from King Charles inviting the president to his country for an unprecedented second state visit.
The Independent
10-07-2025
- The Independent
Freddie the K9 beagle returns to work after being kicked by passenger at airport
A police K9 went back to work at Dulles International Airport in Virginia, outside Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, two weeks after being kicked so hard by a traveler that he became airborne. Freddie, a beagle, was screening a man's luggage and alerted his handler, Customs and Border Protection Agriculture Specialist Melissa Snyder, that the bag may contain fruit and other foods on June 24. Seventy-year-old Hamed Aly Marie, an Egyptian national, had arrived at the airport along with his wife. Snyder asked about their luggage, and it was at that point that Marie intentionally kicked Freddie's right side, lifting the dog off the ground and causing bruising and a contusion, according to CBP. 'It scared him more than anything,' Snyder told CBS News. She said the K9 was taken to see an emergency veterinarian. Marie was detained by CBP and handed over to authorities with the Department of Homeland Security. Freddie was originally a rescue dog but has spent nearly two years in the service of CBP. The K9 was trained to identify luggage holding food items from abroad which may lead to the possible introduction of pests or blights that could damage American agriculture. "He thinks we're playing hide-and-seek and he loves to play hide-and-seek all day," Snyder told CBS News. "To him, it's the greatest game in the world, because he gets paid in treats." Beagles, a relatively small breed with a powerful sense of smell, are optimal for airport work as they may come across as less threatening than larger dogs. During his 22 months at CBP, Freddie has found 4,500 pounds of plant products and 3,800 pounds of meat. That includes 140 pounds of bushmeat such as rats, snakes, camels, and crocodiles. CBP said in a statement that Marie's bag held more than 100 pounds of agricultural products not allowed to enter the U.S. He has pleaded guilty to a federal criminal count of malicious assault on a police animal. Marie was sentenced to time served and agreed to pay Freddie's veterinarian fee, totaling $840. He flew back to Egypt on June 26. Snyder said in a video shared by CBP on Facebook 'It's impressive that people who aren't even citizens of the country are equally concerned about what's happened to him.' She added that because of the bruising to his right side, he's on 'light duty for a couple of weeks.' 'Freddie is probably the sweetest dog we have,' she continued. 'He likes to show off.' 'Whenever he comes to and from the kennel, he has a ducky toy that he thinks he has to carry back and forth,' she noted, before thanking people who have reached out to share their support. 'It's greatly appreciated, it's been nice to have the support from everyone who really cares about him,' said Snyder. Christine Waugh, CBP's Area Port Director for Washington, D.C., said in a statement on June 26: 'Being caught deliberately smuggling well over one hundred pounds of undeclared and prohibited agriculture products does not give one permission to violently assault a defenseless Customs and Border Protection beagle.' 'We rely heavily on our K9 partners, and Freddie was just doing his job,' she added. 'Any malicious attack on one of us is an attack on all of us, and CBP will continue to work with our investigating and prosecuting partners to deal swift and severe justice to perpetrators.'
Yahoo
10-07-2025
- Yahoo
Freddie the K9 beagle returns to work after being kicked by passenger at airport
A police K9 went back to work at Dulles International Airport in Virginia, outside Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, two weeks after being kicked so hard by a traveler that he became airborne. Freddie, a beagle, was screening a man's luggage and alerted his handler, Customs and Border Protection Agriculture Specialist Melissa Snyder, that the bag may contain fruit and other foods on June 24. Seventy-year-old Hamed Aly Marie, an Egyptian national, had arrived at the airport along with his wife. Snyder asked about their luggage, and it was at that point that Marie intentionally kicked Freddie's right side, lifting the dog off the ground and causing bruising and a contusion, according to CBP. 'It scared him more than anything,' Snyder told CBS News. She said the K9 was taken to see an emergency veterinarian. Marie was detained by CBP and handed over to authorities with the Department of Homeland Security. Freddie was originally a rescue dog but has spent nearly two years in the service of CBP. The K9 was trained to identify luggage holding food items from abroad which may lead to the possible introduction of pests or blights that could damage American agriculture. "He thinks we're playing hide-and-seek and he loves to play hide-and-seek all day," Snyder told CBS News. "To him, it's the greatest game in the world, because he gets paid in treats." Beagles, a relatively small breed with a powerful sense of smell, are optimal for airport work as they may come across as less threatening than larger dogs. During his 22 months at CBP, Freddie has found 4,500 pounds of plant products and 3,800 pounds of meat. That includes 140 pounds of bushmeat such as rats, snakes, camels, and crocodiles. CBP said in a statement that Marie's bag held more than 100 pounds of agricultural products not allowed to enter the U.S. He has pleaded guilty to a federal criminal count of malicious assault on a police animal. Marie was sentenced to time served and agreed to pay Freddie's veterinarian fee, totaling $840. He flew back to Egypt on June 26. Snyder said in a video shared by CBP on Facebook'It's impressive that people who aren't even citizens of the country are equally concerned about what's happened to him.' She added that because of the bruising to his right side, he's on 'light duty for a couple of weeks.' 'Freddie is probably the sweetest dog we have,' she continued. 'He likes to show off.' 'Whenever he comes to and from the kennel, he has a ducky toy that he thinks he has to carry back and forth,' she noted, before thanking people who have reached out to share their support. 'It's greatly appreciated, it's been nice to have the support from everyone who really cares about him,' said Snyder. Christine Waugh, CBP's Area Port Director for Washington, D.C., said in a statement on June 26: 'Being caught deliberately smuggling well over one hundred pounds of undeclared and prohibited agriculture products does not give one permission to violently assault a defenseless Customs and Border Protection beagle.' 'We rely heavily on our K9 partners, and Freddie was just doing his job,' she added. 'Any malicious attack on one of us is an attack on all of us, and CBP will continue to work with our investigating and prosecuting partners to deal swift and severe justice to perpetrators.'
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Yahoo
Freddie, the CBP beagle kicked at Dulles Airport, is returning to work
A police K9 is returning to its post at Dulles International Airport this morning, two weeks after allegedly being kicked by a traveler while screening the man's luggage. The dog's handler, Customs and Border Protection Agriculture Specialist Melissa Snyder, told CBS News' Major Garrett that the 5-year-old beagle named Freddie had alerted her to a bag possibly containing fruit and other foods in the baggage claim area of the Virginia airport on June 24. The luggage belonged to Hamed Aly Marie, 70, an Egyptian national who had arrived on EgyptAir Flight 981 with his wife. When Snyder asked the couple about the contents of their luggage, Marie delivered an "intentional kick" to the right side of Freddie's ribcage, hard enough to lift the dog off the ground and cause bruising and a contusion, according to CBP. Luckily, Snyder said "it scared him more than anything." Freddie was taken to a veterinary emergency room while Marie was arrested by CBP and handed over to investigative authorities from Homeland Security, according to Snyder. Now, after a couple weeks of recovery, Freddie is ready to head back to work. Originally a rescue dog, Freddie has spent 22 months with CBP, which trained the beagle to locate and identify travelers bringing in food items from overseas, protecting against the potential introduction of pests or blights that could devastate parts of the U.S. agricultural industry. It's a big responsibility for a small dog, but Snyder said that for Freddie, the job is more fun than real work. "He thinks we're playing hide-and-seek and he loves to play hide-and-seek all day," Snyder said. "To him it's the greatest game in the world, because he gets paid in treats." Beagles are especially good for airport work, and it's not just because of their powerful sense of smell, Snyder said. Freddie's breed can come across as less threatening than other, larger dogs, creating a calmer environment for everyone. During his nearly two years with CBP, Freddie has put his skills to good work, sniffing out 4,500 pounds of plant products and 3,800 pounds of meat – including 140 pounds of bushmeat from rats, snakes, camels and crocodiles. Marie's bag was filled with more than 100 pounds of agricultural items prohibited from entering the U.S., according to a statement from CBP. A day later, he pleaded guilty to a federal criminal count of malicious assault on a police animal and was sentenced to time served, alongside an agreement to pay Freddie's $840 veterinarian fee. CBP reported that Marie flew back to Egypt on June 26. Sneak peek: Who Killed Aileen Seiden in Room 15? Everything we know so far about the deadly Texas floods Trump meeting with African leaders at White House, sends more tariff letters
