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| Next, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Troy Edgar, greeting white South African refugees, who the Trump administration says have been victims of racial discrimination in post-apartheid South Africa. | ||
| Both officials speak to reporters about the decision to grant refugee status. | ||
| This is about 15 minutes. | ||
| Welcome to the United States of America. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| It is such an honor for us to receive you here today. | ||
| This is the land of the free, and we know that all of you have faced... | ||
| I'm Chris Landau. | ||
| First of all, let me introduce myself. | ||
| I'm the Deputy Secretary of State of the United States. | ||
| This is my friend Troy Edgar. | ||
| Yeah, I'm the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security. | ||
| Again, welcome. | ||
| So great to have you guys here. | ||
| I know you've gone through a long flight. | ||
| I cannot believe there are babies and children who are actually so well behaved. | ||
| This is much better than mine. | ||
| So bless you for that. | ||
| And, you know, I think it's so happy. | ||
| It makes me so happy to see you with our flag in your hands. | ||
| And that flag symbolizes liberty for so many of us. | ||
| Many of us, our families, have had a journey not that different from the journey that you are embarking on today. | ||
| My own father was born in Europe and had to leave his country when Hitler came in in the 1930s and made his way to South America first and then eventually to the United States. | ||
| So he is an immigrant who actually, you know, was able to benefit from the many blessings of this country. | ||
| And one of the reasons that I really wanted to go and work for the government is because I wanted to give back to this country that really brought freedom to my family and allowed us to escape a very difficult situation in another country. | ||
| So, you know, I know that this is going to be, you know, any adjustment in life, any change takes some while, takes a while to get used to. | ||
| But I want you all to know that you are really welcome here and that we respect what you have had to deal with these last few years. | ||
| We respect the long tradition of your people and what you have accomplished over the years. | ||
| And I am sure that you will be successful. | ||
| As you know, a lot of you, I think, are farmers, right? | ||
| When you have quality seeds, you can put them in foreign soil and they will blossom, they will bloom. | ||
| And we are excited to welcome you here to our country where we think you will bloom and we will hopefully allow you to have fulfilling lives for your children. | ||
| And then we will bloom and we will benefit alongside you. | ||
| So thank you very much for coming here. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I would like to add again on behalf of President Trump, Secretary Noam. | ||
| We're just so grateful that you guys are here. | ||
| You know, everybody within DHS, we've been so excited to be able to get you guys here to process, to vet, everything. | ||
| So you guys get a really warm start. | ||
| After all the, I was tracking your flight 12 hours that you were last night. | ||
| I'm like, oh my god. | ||
| So thank you for just the patience of being able to get here. | ||
| Very similar to Chris, is our Secretary Landau is that my wife came from Iran, same thing, persecution from Christianity. | ||
| And she's come here, she now speaks five languages. | ||
| She's a school teacher. | ||
| She's a great American story. | ||
| And we just were so grateful. | ||
| I think Chris and I both just wanted to come and make sure that we greet you guys, we meet you, give our contact information to you. | ||
| And if there's anything that we could do, we just want to welcome you personally. | ||
| We look forward to, after this, to be able to spend a little bit of time with you and get to talk to you guys. | ||
| So thank you, guys. | ||
| So first, Deputy Secretary Landau is going to give a few remarks. | ||
| Here to go. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| And thanks, ladies and gentlemen, for coming out here this afternoon. | ||
| The Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security and I just met with this first flight of South African refugees to arrive in our country pursuant to the President's executive order about certain egregious actions in South Africa. | ||
| The President made it clear that Afrikaners in South Africa who were the victims of unjust racial discrimination would be welcome to come to the United States and he's now delivering on that promise. | ||
| The Deputy Secretary and I just spoke to some of the folks who arrived on this flight and they tell quite harrowing stories of the violence that they faced in South Africa that was not redressed by the authorities by the unjust application of the law. | ||
| The United States, as we were proud to say, stands for equal justice under law and the fair and impartial application of the law. | ||
| And again, this is a group that has not experienced that and has, to the contrary, experienced violence and really fear for their lives in South Africa. | ||
| They were really subject to very serious, egregious, and targeted threats. | ||
| And we wish them well in their journey to the United States. | ||
| We underscored for them that the American people are a welcoming and generous people. | ||
| And we underscored the importance of assimilation into the United States, which is one of the very important factors that we look to in refugee admissions. | ||
| And through this resettlement program for these folks who were vetted in South Africa, and we're sending a clear message that the United States really rejects the egregious persecution of people on the basis of race in South Africa. | ||
| And we welcome these people to the United States and to a new future. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Good afternoon. | ||
| I'm Deputy Secretary Troy Edgar. | ||
| First of all, I just want to thank President Trump, Secretary Noam, for the opportunity to come down here and welcome these folks from South Africa. | ||
| You know, I also am very grateful for Deputy Secretary Landau. | ||
| You know, we do a lot of work together to try to further the objectives of the president, and this has been a very important day. | ||
| It was great to greet these folks that came in to hear their stories, to hear what they've been through. | ||
| You know, this is a real situation. | ||
| These people have gone through a lot of stuff, and we're just grateful to have them in the U.S. As many of us know, the United States has a long history of bringing people over. | ||
| My wife was an Iranian, came over during the regime change in the 70s, and she's now here, speaks five languages, a school teacher. | ||
| We think the American Dream is possible for these South Africans. | ||
| We're super excited for them. | ||
| And Deputy Secretary and myself have given these people our personal information and said anything we could do to help them be successful. | ||
| We just want to wish them the best. | ||
| We thank you guys for coming down here and celebrating this with us. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| A couple questions first. | ||
| Breitbart. | ||
| Hi, thank you for your time. | ||
| What are some examples of racial discrimination or attacks that initially caught the eye of the Trump administration and is there a pathway to American citizenship for these refugees? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Well, thank you for that question. | ||
| I think if you look at the executive order that the President issued back on February 7th of this year, it talks about the terrible expropriation act that was enacted last year in South Africa that allows for the expropriation without compensation of farmland. | ||
| A fair number of these refugees were farmers who've farmed this particular land for generations and now face the threat not only of expropriation but also of direct violence. | ||
| We had a chance to speak to them about many of these folks have experience with threatening invasions of their homes, their farms, and a real lack of interest or success of the government in doing anything about this situation, | ||
| as well obviously as several very vociferous South African politicians repeating things like kill the boar, kill the Afrikaner. | ||
| And these people have been living under a shadow of violence and terror for some time now. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And BBC. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| I just wanted to know, there were many people who fit the criteria of seeking help, who are fleeing persecution. | ||
| Afghans, for example, they live in a country run by the Taliban. | ||
| But they're being denied refugee status. | ||
| So I'm wondering why is such an exception been made for the Afrikaans, especially when the South African government says they're not in danger. | ||
| And are you going to open up the refugee settlement program for others? | ||
| Thank you for that question. | ||
| I think you may recall that on the President's first day in office, on January 20th of this year, he issued an executive order that paused U.S. | ||
| Refugee programs that had been going at record levels under the prior administration and had brought in people that we were not sure had been carefully vetted for national security issues, and put a pause on the refugee admission program in General. | ||
| That pause, of course, was subject from the very beginning to exceptions where it was determined that this would be in the interest of the United States. | ||
| Some of the criteria are making sure that refugees did not pose any challenge to our national security and that they could be assimilated easily into our country. | ||
| So, the president on February 7th issued an executive order about the egregious conditions in South Africa. | ||
| And all of these folks who have just come in today have been carefully vetted pursuant to our refugee standards. | ||
| And whether or not the broader refugee programs for other people around the world will be lifted is still an ongoing consideration. | ||
| But again, the president has recognized the dire situation of this particular group of people. | ||
| And again, they went through the process. | ||
| It is not surprising, unfortunately, that a country from which refugees come does not concede that they are refugees. | ||
| And unfortunately, you know, the South African government has not done what we feel is appropriate to guarantee the rights of these citizens to live in peace with their fellow South Africans, which is why, under our domestic law, they were given refugee status. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| How many people have come? | ||
| How many people have been brought over? | ||
| release the number. | ||
| Here's a look at some of our live coverage coming up today on C-SPAN 3. | ||
| First, at 10:15 a.m. Eastern, the Senate Judiciary Committee holds a hearing examining the role of pharmacy benefit managers or intermediaries in the prescription drug supply chain and how they can impact market competition and drug prices. | ||
| And then at 2:30, the House Ways and Means Committee takes up the 2025 GOP budget package, which may extend many of the tax cuts from President Trump's first term before they expire. | ||
| Republican leaders in the House are looking to reduce taxes by more than $4 trillion and cut spending by $1.5 trillion in the next decade. | ||
| Votes on amendments are expected late into the evening. | ||
| You can also watch these programs live on the C-SPAN Now app or online at c-span.org. | ||
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