The Trump White House is poised to dramatically reduce the number of refugees that will be accepted into the United States over the next fiscal year -- with the ceiling falling a whopping 94% from the limit set by the Biden administration, according to a New York Times report. 

Citing "people familiar with the matter," the Times says a maximum of just 7,500 refugees would be admitted over the coming year, a tiny fraction of the 125,000 limit set by the Biden administration last year. Most of those slots would be reserved for white Afrikaners fleeing South Africa and its murderous violence against white people and the looming threat of uncompensated land confiscation. Afrikaners now represent less than 5 percent of South Africa's population.

The pending reduction and prioritization of white refugees elicited condemnation from promoters of mass immigration. “Such a low refugee ceiling would break America’s promise to people who played by the rules," Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) president Mark Hetfield, told the Times. "Trump isn’t just putting the Afrikaners to the front of the line, he is kicking years-long-waiting refugees out of the line." HIAS has itself been hammered by Trump policies, slashing its staff by more than half after the new administration slashed funding for refugee programs.  

In May, a group of 59 white Afrikaner refugees arrived in the United States via a chartered flight, raising eyebrows given the speed with which they were whisked into the country, in contrast to people from other countries who've faced waits that extend over years. “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,” Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said after welcoming them to Dulles International Airport near Washington DC. 

On Sep. 30, Trump signed a presidential determination to reset the ceiling. However, it won't become official until after consultations with Congress that are required by federal law. For now, those consultations will seemingly have to wait until the government shutdown ends. Earlier this week, a quartet of Democratic senators and representatives used a joint letter to accuse Trump of neglecting his duty:  

“Despite repeated outreach from Democratic and Republican committee staff, the Trump administration has completely discarded its legal obligation, leaving Congress in the dark and refugees in limbo...The consequences are dire...[the virtual shutdown of the program is] betraying the nation’s promise as a refuge for the oppressed.”

Moving aggressively to put the brakes on Biden's open-border policies, Trump suspended the refugee program with an executive order signed shortly after his inauguration. He similarly suspended the acceptance of migrants presenting at the border under a different official avenue referred to as asylum. Trump subsequently carved out an explicit exception to his refugee-program suspension for Afrikaners. However, it appears the total number of Afrikaners to be accepted into the United States this year is less than 100. 

Making it to the United States via the refugee program often entails a multi-year wait in overseas refugee camps, along with successfully passing interviews, background checks and medical exams. Some 130,000 conditionally-approved refugees and 14,000 Iranian religious minorities who've already cleared the prerequisites are stuck in limbo. 

In other news on the immigration front, the Trump administration has started offering $2,500 apiece to unaccompanied migrant children who are age 14 and older if they'll self-deport to their home countries. The policy was instituted via a memorandum sent to the Department of Health and Human Services on Friday afternoon. NBC News, which obtained a copy, also reported that, according to rumors among immigration advocates, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has christened the self-deportation scheme "Freaky Friday." ICE refuted the name, but confirmed the program, emphasizing that it was a “strictly voluntary option to return home to their families.” In just one of many dimensions of the previous era of open-border madness, more than 300,000 unaccompanied children entered the country during the Biden administration.