A US-funded flight carrying the first group of 59 white South African refugees has landed in Washington, D.C., where the Trump administration will grant them refugee status.

President Donald Trump said asylum claims for the country’s African minority had been accelerated as the applicants were victims of racial discrimination.

The South African government denied this, saying the claims of persecution did not meet the criteria required by the “refugee law”.

Asked on Monday why white South Africans have priority over famine and war victims elsewhere in Africa, Trump stated that they are being murdered. “It’s a genocide that’s taking place,” Trump told reporters at the White House.

South African authorities, who say the Trump administration has gotten involved in a domestic issue “it does not understand” (sic).

Over the last years hundreds of white South Africans have been murdered after the current government took office. In many government party rallies there have been open calls for the murder of white people. The government has been also confiscating without any excuse farmland that belongs to white South Africans driving them away from their homes.

A State Department official said the chartered plane carrying the first 59 Africans brought in as part of Trump’s bid had landed at Washington airport. Some were heading to Minnesota, which has Democratic leanings and is famous for welcoming refugees, while others planned to go to Republican-led states such as Idaho and Alabama, sources told Reuters.