WATCH: Trump says U.S. takes refugees of ‘persecution or genocide,’ including Afrikaners

When pressed about fast-tracking white South Africans into the U.S. as refugees, President Donald Trump said Wednesday that the U.S. takes refugees from “many, many locations” where people are being persecuted, including white South African farmers.

In an Oval Office meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Trump said “a lot of people are very concerned” about the white minority group, known as Afrikaners.

“They’re fleeing South Africa and it’s a very sad thing to see,” Trump said.

But he also repeated false claims that millions of refugees are entering the U.S. from other countries “totally unvetted.”

“They came from all over the world. In many cases they’re criminals, they come from prisons, they come from mental institutions, they come from street gangs, and drug dealers,” he said.

In recent days, the Trump administration has made a display of accepting Afrikaners, primarily white South African farmers, who feel they are being persecuted because of their race. White South Africans own three-quarters of privately held land in the country, and control about 60 percent of top corporate management jobs, despite comprising only 7 percent of the population.

Afrikaners are the descendants of French and Dutch settlers who colonized South Africa centuries ago. They were the architects of apartheid, the racist system of government that prioritized the country’s white minority which officially ended 30 years ago.

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