President Donald Trump on Monday highlighted the devastating plight of white farmers in South Africa, whose murders on a mass scale he labeled a "genocide."

Asked by a reporter why he has granted refugee status for white Afrikaners in South Africa while denying the status for others, Trump responded that white farmers in the region are being killed en masse.

"It's a genocide that's taken place that you people don't want to write about," Trump told the media, noting he's considering not attending an upcoming G20 meeting over the issue.

"It's a terrible thing that's taken place. And farmers are being killed. They happen to be white, but whether they're white or black makes no difference to me," the POTUS told the media.

"But white farmers are being brutally killed. And the land is being confiscated in South Africa. And the newspapers and the media television media doesn't even talk about it," he added. "If it were the other way around, they'd talk about it. That would be the only story they'd talk about."

Trump continued: "And I don't care who they are. I don't care about their race, their color. I don't care about their height, their weight. I don't care about anything. I just know that what's happening is terrible. I have people that live in South Africa. They say it's a terrible situation that's taken place."

"So we've essentially extended citizenship to those people…to escape from that violence and come here."

Afrikaners, descendants of Dutch settlers known colloquially as "Boers," have for several decades been targeted for violence in South Africa, with over 3,000 primarily white farmers being murdered in racially motivated attacks, while the country's Marxist government has effectively sanctioned the confiscation of their land without compensation.