President Donald Trump’s first group of white South African refugees has landed in the US as part of a resettlement program that a Democrat labelled “baffling”.

While Trump has blocked asylum seekers from the rest of the world, he has established a refugee program for white Afrikaners.

The initial cohort of 49 arrived in Washington on Tuesday (AEST) after leaving Johannesburg on Sunday.

Trump has claimed that South Africa’s white population has been the victim of “racial discrimination”.

That assertion has spread in far-right circles for years and has been echoed by the president’s South African-born ally Elon Musk.

In his latest statement on Monday, Trump went so far as to claim that “genocide” was taking place against them.

South Africa’s Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola has refuted suggestions of persecution of white Afrikaner South Africans.

Democrat Senator Jeanne Shaheen said it was “baffling” as to why the Trump Administration was resettling Afrikaners while blocking “thousands of legitimate asylum seekers who have fled persecution”.

“The decision by this administration to put one group at the front of the line is clearly politically motivated and an effort to rewrite history,” said Shaheen.

“The Administration must clarify why these individuals qualify for refugee status and resettlement in the US and why they have been prioritised over refugees like Afghans, Burmese Rohingya and Sudanese who have fled their homes due to conflict and persecution.”

One of the new arrivals, Charl Kleinhaus, 46, told Reuters he was to be resettled in Buffalo, New York, with his daughter, son and grandson.

He said his life was threatened and people tried to claim his property as their own.

“We never expected this land expropriation thing to go so far,” he told Reuters.

Trump kicked off a wide-ranging immigration crackdown after taking office in January, including an indefinite suspension of refugee resettlement.

In a related executive order, the Republican president said the US would only admit refugees who “can fully and appropriately assimilate”.

Despite the broad refugee freeze, Trump in February called on the US to prioritise resettling Afrikaners, descendants of mostly Dutch early settlers, saying they were “victims of unjust racial discrimination”.

The average white household in South Africa owns 20 times the wealth of the average black household, according to the Review of Political Economy, an international academic journal.

In interviews with US immigration officers, white South Africans seeking refugee status have highlighted troubles with land disputes, crime and perceived racism, Reuters reported in April.

The South African government has criticised the Trump effort, saying it fails to recognise the country’s history of colonialism and apartheid.

While some Afrikaners have expressed interest in going to politically conservative US states, Democratic-leaning Minnesota has emerged as a popular choice, two of the sources told Reuters.

Minnesota has a reputation as a welcoming state for refugees, including those from Somalia, Afghanistan, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Some also plan to head to Republican-leaning states, such as Idaho and Alabama, one of the sources said.

The reason to charter a flight for the initial group of Afrikaners was not immediately clear.

The charter plane would cost far more than commercial tickets, sources said.

-with AAP