The first plane carrying a group of 49 white South Africans who received refugee status from the United States government landed at Washington Dulles International Airport on Monday.

The group had departed Johannesburg on Sunday, according to a New York Times report.

The South Africans who arrived in the U.S. on Monday had received expedited processing by the President Donald Trump administration, after waiting no more than three months.

According to the American Immigration Council, refugee resettlement before the first Trump administration typically took an average of 18 to 24 months.

This development followed rising tensions between South Africa and the U.S., with Mr Trump claiming that members of the country’s Afrikaner minority were victims of “racial discrimination.”

But this was dismissed by South Africa’s Foreign Minister, Ronald Lamola, who said, “There is no persecution of white Afrikaner South Africans.”

Mr Lamola added that police reports debunk Mr Trump’s assertion.

However, Monday’s arrival marks a drastic shift in U.S. refugee policy, which has long focused on assisting people fleeing war, famine, and genocide.

On his first day in office, Mr Trump halted all refugee admission programmes before creating a pathway for Afrikaners—a white ethnic minority that ruled during apartheid in South Africa—to resettle in the United States.

Mr Trump said on Monday that the United States was extending citizenship to these individuals, who he said were victims of a genocide.

“Farmers are being killed,” he told reporters. “They happen to be white. Whether they are white or Black makes no difference to me. White farmers are being brutally killed and the land is being confiscated in South Africa.”