Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau greets Afrikaner refugees from...

Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau greets Afrikaner refugees from South Africa, Monday, May 12, 2025, at Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Va. Credit: AP/Julia Demaree Nikhinson

RALEIGH, N.C. (RNS) — The 12×30-foot storage unit in a Raleigh, North Carolina, suburb is crammed full of chairs, tables, mattresses, lamps, pots and pans.

Most of its contents will soon be hauled off to two apartments that Welcome House Raleigh is furnishing for three newly arrived refugees. It’s a job the ministry, which is a project of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina, has handled countless times on behalf of newly arrived refugees from such places as Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Syria and Venezuela.

But these two apartments are going to three Afrikaners — whose status as refugees is, according to many faith-based groups and others, highly controversial.

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This content is written and produced by Religion News Service and distributed by The Associated Press. RNS and AP partner on some religion news content. RNS is solely responsible for this story.

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