Alexander Towne one of the white South Africans granted asylum through Donald Trump’s new immigration program has been charged with second-degree murder after allegedly strangling his wife, Kim White Towne, in their Virginia home just weeks after they arrived in the U.S. with their toddler.
Sources say the couple had just moved from South Africa as part of Trump’s controversial refugee plan on May 12, 2025, which claimed white South Africans were being “persecuted” back home. While Trump is out here pushing ICE to rip apart immigrant families and labeling others as “dangerous,” his hand-picked refugee allegedly murdered his wife in cold blood on May 24, 2025.
Kim’s family said she was planning to leave the relationship after years of abuse. Now they’re working to bring her body back to South Africa for burial. Alexander is being held without bail.
Alexander and Kim Towne were among the white South Africans who recently relocated to the United States under a refugee program initiated by President-Elect Donald Trump. This program, launched in February 2025, was designed to grant asylum to white South Africans, primarily Afrikaners, based on claims of systemic violence and racial discrimination linked to South Africa’s post-apartheid land reform policies.
The Trump administration justified the program by alleging that white South African farmers were victims of what it described as a “genocide” and state-backed persecution. These claims have been widely discredited by experts and the South African government, which has denied that white South Africans face persecution that would meet the threshold for refugee status under international law.
While the program expedited the resettlement of white South Africans, it coincided with the suspension of other U.S. refugee programs, effectively limiting admissions from countries experiencing widespread violence and poverty.
