South Africa says the Kenyan nationals arrested in Tuesday’s raid will now be deported and will be banned from entering the country for five years.
They had previously been denied work visas but were found “engaging in work despite only being in possession of tourist visas, in clear violation of their conditions of entry into the country”, the statement said.
South Africa also expressed concern that foreign officials appeared to have coordinated with undocumented workers and said it had reached out to the US and Kenya to resolve the matter.
The home affairs department said the raid showcased the commitment that South Africa shared “with the United States to combating illegal immigration and visa abuse in all its forms”.
In a statement issued on Thursday, the US State Department said it condemned “in the strongest terms the South African government’s recent detention of US officials performing their duties to provide humanitarian support to Afrikaners”.
It also accused South Africa of releasing the passport information of its officials, which it called “an unacceptable form of harassment” and an attempt to intimidate them.
The BBC has asked South Africa for comment on this allegation but in its statement on Wednesday, it said that no US officials were arrested and the operation was not at a diplomatic site.
The processing of applications by white South Africans is being done by RSC Africa, according to the US embassy in South Africa. RSC Africa is a Kenyan-based refugee support centre operated by Church World Service (CWS).
The BBC has asked RSC Africa for comment.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that Afrikaners are being subjected to a “genocide” in South Africa, even though there is no evidence that white farmers are more likely to be the victims of crime than their black counterparts.
He offered Afrikaners refugee status earlier this year after South African President Cyril Ramaphosa signed a law allowing the government to seize land without compensation in rare instances.
A first group of about 50 people flew to the US on a chartered plane – it is not clear how many others have moved, or are in the process of applying.
Because of the legacy of the racist apartheid system, the majority of privately owned farmland in South Africa is owned by the white community and South Africa’s government is under pressure to provide more land to black farmers. However, it stresses that no land has yet been seized under the new law.
South Africa has repeatedly tried to mend fences with the Trump administration, most famously when Ramaphosa led a high-level delegation to the White House earlier this year.
However, this backfired when Trump ambushed him with images, videos and news reports allegedly showing that the government was persecuting white people.
One video featured firebrand South African opposition figure Julius Malema singing: “Shoot the Boer [Afrikaner], Shoot the farmer”.
However, a South African court has ruled that this song, which Malema often chants at his political rallies, is not hate speech.
Last month, the US boycotted the G20 summit in South Africa and has said it would not invite South African officials to its meetings since it took over leadership of the grouping of the world’s biggest economies. BBC
