Afrikaner refugees from South Africa holding American flags arrive, Monday, May 12, 2025, at Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Va. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
Texas is by far the top destination for refugees approved for resettlement in the United States, even as President Donald Trump’s immigration policy increasingly allows refugees from only one country in the world: South Africa.
According to State Department data published last week, the 817 refugees set for resettlement in Texas this fiscal year are all from South Africa and comprise more than 12% of the 6,668 refugees admitted nationally.
Second and third to Texas are Florida and California, each with little more than 7% of refugees admitted. All 50 states show at least one refugee resettlement in fiscal 2026. The only refugees the State Department approved in fiscal 2026 who are not from South Africa were three people from Afghanistan sent to Colorado in November.
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Before Trump’s second term, it had been at least a decade since any refugees from South Africa were sent to Texas, according to State Department data.
A focus on South Africa
Natalie Nanasi, a Southern Methodist University law professor who teaches refugee and asylum law, said the resettlement of refugees can become politicized.
“And you can see that in the numbers of who gets admitted in the first place,” she said.
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Late last month, Trump raised the refugee cap for fiscal 2026 from 7,500 to 17,500, saying in a memo published in the Federal Register that an “unforeseen emergency refugee situation now exists” in South Africa.
That wasn’t the first time Trump singled out the country at the southern tip of the African continent.
In February 2025, Trump issued an executive order directing the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security to prioritize refugee applications from “Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination.” Afrikaners are mostly descendents of Dutch, and also French and German, colonial settlers.
South Africa’s Department of International Relations & Cooperation has issued at least five public statements since then on Afrikaners and discrimination, accusing Trump of relying on and amplifying racist misinformation.
“The claim of a ‘white genocide’ in South Africa is widely discredited and unsupported by reliable evidence,” according to a statement from the department in October 2025. “This is further evidenced by the courageous and patriotic open letter from prominent members of the Afrikaner community themselves, who have publicly rejected this very narrative.”
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Every president has the power to set limits on accepting refugees and even to designate specific countries or groups as preferred for entry. And still to those who study such things, Trump’s administration is different – moving faster and shifting more starkly away from previous policies.
“These policies make it clear this administration doesn’t approach refugee resettlement the way past administrations from both parties have since the 1980s,” said Laura Collins, director of immigration policy at SMU’s George W. Bush Institute.
Many new Texans
Nanasi said refugees have little say in their destination once admitted.
“A refugee doesn’t decide where they go,” she said. “They’re just sent there.”
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Texas is often among the top locations for refugee resettlement, regardless of presidents and policies, according to State Department data.
In fiscal 2024, the last full year of President Joe Biden’s administration, Texas also took in the greatest proportion of refugees nationally. The state accepted 9,768 people from 44 countries – just less than 10% of all 100,034 refugees admitted. The top three countries that year: Venezuela, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
None of those who came to Texas then were from South Africa.
In the first quarter of fiscal 2025, preceding Trump’s second inauguration, Texas was the destination of more than 3,800 refugees from 41 countries. Again none were from South Africa. The top three countries of origin for those applying for refugee status were Venezuela, Afghanistan and Burma.
That changed abruptly once Trump was in office.
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From February 2025 through the end of the fiscal year in September, the State Department lists admissions to Texas of only 72 people in total: 64 from South Africa, seven from El Salvador and one from Norway.
At its current pace, the State Department would admit a total of 10,015 refugees nationally in fiscal 2026 – scarcely more than came to Texas alone two years earlier. That total would be the lowest number of U.S. refugee admissions in at least 50 years, including during Trump’s first term.
The government’s fiscal year begins October 1 and ends the following September. Nothing in the data says where within a state refugees get resettled.