Trump Engages in a Land Grab in Birmingham, Alabama for the Prioritized Resettlement of Apartheid-Loving White South African Refugees

PART I

By: Donald V. Watkins

Copyrighted on June 10, 2026

In 2025, white South Africans and Elon Musk asked President Donald Trump to prioritized U.S. citizenship for Afrikaners under the false pretense that they are victims of genocide in their country. The Trump administration is actively recruiting apartheid-loving Afrikaners to the U.S.

Despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary, South African native Elon Musk convinced President Donald Trump in January 2025 that fellow white South Africans, known as “Afrikaners,” are victims of genocide in their own country. Afrikaners are the white ethnic minority that ruled South Africa with brutal force during the era of racial apartheid (1948-1994) in that country.

Since October 1, 2025, the U.S. has accepted 6,668 refugees. Of those, 6,665 were Afrikaners. Trump plans to admit up to 17,500 Afrikaners by the end of the 2026 fiscal year in September.

A protestor greets a group of Afrikaners upon their arrival in the U.S. at Dulles Airport in Washington, DC.

According to a New York Times article in May 2025, one of the primary resettlement cities for Afrikaners is Birmingham, Alabama. The city that was once known as the “Johannesburg of the South” for its violently enforced racial segregation and suffocating discrimination against Blacks is being prepared to receive the family members of the Afrikaners who enforced White Supremacy against the country’s black South African majority with massacres, torture, beatings, and unimaginable acts of gratuitous violence.

Trump’s U.S. Departments of State (DOS), Homeland Security (DHS), Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and Health and Human Services (HHS), have partnered with the Alabama Office for Refugees (AOR) and various non-profit groups to administer the resettlement of Afrikaners in Birmingham (and three other primary locations in America). This effort is coordinated through the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which has an $11 billion budget for the 2026 fiscal year.

AOR currently has three primary in-state regional offices that participate in the federal refugee resettlement program, with one -- Birmingham-based Inspiritus -- specifically identified as a processing center for Afrikaners in Birmingham.

Once the Afrikaners arrive in America, they get generous cash stipends, more than adequate food assistance, healthcare via Medicaid, employment placement assistance, educational assistance for their children, and housing assistance on an interim and permanent basis. In short, Trump has federal money flowing to the Afrikaners on a priority basis.

Five Birmingham Neighborhoods and Communities Have Been Targeted in a Land Grab for Afrikaner Resettlement

Working quietly with AOR, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, and Sen. Katie Britt, the Trump administration has targeted the Birmingham neighborhoods and communities of Smithfield, which includes College Hills, Graymont, Enon Ridge, and East Thomas, and Bush Hills for the resettlement of thousands of incoming Afrikaners.

One of the main pillars of Trump's Birmingham Afrikaner resettlement plan took shape on November 10, 2025, when DHS and the U.S. Coast Guard issued a joint public notice of their intent to purchase property for a "training center." The property description in the notice mirrored the property description of the 192-acre campus of Birmingham-Southern College (BSC).

The Birmingham-Southern College campus is located in the heart of five nearly-all-black neighborhoods in predominantly black Birmingham, Alabama.

The Coast Guard is a DHS law enforcement agency, just like ICE. It is ramping up its force by up to 15,000 law enforcement members and support staff. What's driving this growth is Trump's ramped-up of ICE roundups, detentions, and deportations of immigrants of color.

The BSC purchase, which was announced in March, was part of Trump’s "Trojan Horse" trick on the unsuspecting Birmingham neighborhoods and communities. The $126 million used for the purchase reportedly came from the $38 billion allocated in Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which was signed into law on July 4, 2025, for 34 new ICE detention centers.

On June 5, 2026, the Trump administration celebrated the BSC purchase with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and an official dedication program on the BSC campus. No Black federal, state, city, or county official was permitted on the stage at the dedication ceremony or in the photo-op of the ribbon cutting. This snub occurred three days after the U.S. Supreme Court okayed a congressional redistricting map that intentionally discriminated against black voters in Alabama.

The all-white ribbon cutting ceremony for the Coast Guard "training center" on the Birmingham-South College campus in the heart of five black neighborhoods in a predominantly black city, June 5, 2026.

The all-white dedication program for the Coast Guard "training center" on the Birmingham-South College campus in the heart of five black neighborhoods in a predominantly black city, June 5, 2026.

This snub was a subtle but direct message to the incoming Afrikaners, as well as the 11,000 new ones in the citizenship pipeline this fiscal year, that the "White Supremacy" to which they were accustomed in South Africa is intact in Birmingham and protected by the Trump administration, the state of Alabama, and the Supreme Court today.

The estimated 1,000 civilian jobs at the Birmingham Coast Guard facility are earmarked for Afrikaners, not the black residents who live in the five adversely impacted neighborhoods and communities. What is more, the presence of the Coast Guard facility affords the Trump administration a unique opportunity to use the federal power of eminent domain to: (a) clear these neighborhoods and communities of existing residents and other “undesirables,” (b) take the private residential properties into the federal land management program that holds title to two soon-to-be-demolished public housing projects in the affected neighborhoods, and (c) lease or sell all of this federal property to private developers for the exclusive use in the Afrikaner resettlement program on an autonomous “Whites Only,” mini-version of a “Freedom City.”

The Trump administration also plans to use federal eminent domain power to obtain additional property in the vicinity for DHS's ICE immigrant detention center function. No local approvals are needed for Trump’s land grab. He can repurpose this property on an emergency basis for critical federal government functions.

On May 7, 2025, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey and the MAGA-controlled Alabama legislature conducted advance preparatory work for Trump’s land grab plan by seizing control of the Birmingham Water Works Board’s $1.3 billion in assets, without any significant fight, and placing these assets under the firm control of a newly-formed, white-controlled, Central Alabama Water agency. Trump and his allies in Alabama knew that whoever controls the water controls land development and redevelopment projects.

Funding for Trump’s Birmingham land grab for the Afrikaner resettlement plan is coming from $18 billion in budgeted federal funds and $5 billion in tax credits that have been redirected and earmarked for different scales and versions of Trump’s “Freedom Cities” program.

Part II in this investigative series will follow the money. Who is benefiting from the flow of money in Trump’s Birmingham land grab, and who is not? The answers will shock you.